The novels of Rosamond Lehmann have always had a following, even if she has never quite managed to achieve a place in the Eng. Lit.
canon. They are upper middle class, upper middle brow, and in habit an emotional region close to that of Elizabeth Bowen though the social back ground is rather different. This book, her first, came out in 1927 and gives a curious impression of a sealed off, self sufficient socially secure world, muffled and slightly inward looking, which in retrospect appears to have vanished with the second World War. As you might expect, it is stylishly written, socially observant and notably acute in its feminine psychology the men, by contrast, are somehow a little less real than real.