Rosamond Lehmann must be one of the most beautiful women ever to have written novels that are worth serious consideration; and one of the most tragic. Wherever one stands on the gamut of believing a need to know or no need to know about the writer in order to make an adequate assessment of the work, some writers force a stance on to the critic. Rosamond Lehmann does this. My own wish is always to consider the work in the maximum isolation the work allows, but with Miss Lehmann's, no isolation is possible. With most living novelists, and especially with novelists one knows, a fair first test is whether the writer is forgotten by the end of the first few pages. With Miss Lehmann's novels and stories the writer never can be forgotten. Yet this particular test of quality is in her case invalid.

LRB 1 April 1983 | PDF Download