Angela Thirkell, granddaughter of pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, was born in London in 1890. At the age of twenty-eight she moved to Melbourne, Australia where she became involved in broadcasting and was a frequent contributor to the British periodicals. Mrs. Thirkell did not begin writing novels until her return to Britan in 1930; then, for the rest of her life, she produced a new book almost every year. Her stylish prose and deft portrayal of the human comedy in the imaginary county of Barsetshire have delighted readers for decades. She died in 1961, just before her seventy-first birthday.

“A novelist who occupies a niche in my private pantheon…Noone lving has such a mastery over the humor of non-sequiturs.” – Orville Prescott, in the New York Times