Sublime

In 2019 the Emilia Report (named after England’s first published female poet, Emilia Bassano) analysed coverage of male and female writers and found that women were twice as likely to have their ages referenced – or, in the case of Sally Rooney, her appearance, ‘like a startled deer with sensuous lips’, according to one Swiss critic.

Als Tierärztin musste sie sich mit einer Menge seltsamer Kreaturen herumschlagen. Damit meinte sie allerdings nicht die Patienten. Nein, diese waren niedlich, knuffig, putzig – und der Grund, warum Audrey Smart sich überhaupt für diesen Beruf entschieden hatte. Audrey hatte noch nie

One of my favourite blurb descriptions of a character is of Count Fosco in The Woman in White: ‘who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison’. No need for a ‘sinister’ at all there. Another is on Patrick Hamilton’s The Slaves of Solitude, which tells us that a young woman in a boarding house ‘pecks at spam and mashed potato by night’,

Just as Terry Wogan said of his days as a radio DJ, ‘You are not talking to an audience, you are talking to one person – and they are only half listening anyway.’

From the 1550s onwards a steady stream of literature warns of the numerous cons that could be practised upon the unwary. Apparently a small industry making loaded dice existed within the King’s Bench and Marshalsea prisons, but the master of the craft was a man named Bird who lived in Holborn and produced fourteen different types of loaded dice to

Since then I have written lots more books and started a publishing company more aligned with my own vision: one that celebrates women’s creativity, supports them emotionally as they launch their work, pays them fairly and promotes them sustainably.