Literary Studies

Vivian Gornick’s writing has always explored the hard truths of existence: the nature of human loneliness, and the struggle to love, work, and connect. In these seven seminal essays Gornick chronicles the New York streets that energise her, and looks back on the dangerously charged atmosphere of the Catskills where she waitressed as a student in the late fifties. She describes her introduction to feminism and the lessons it taught her, reflects on a friendship with an older female writer that...

When Penguin released a new, unexpurgated edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960 they were charged with the crime of publishing obscene material. Penguin was forced to defend the book’s literary merit in a court of law – thus beginning one of the most famous trials of the 20th century. There to take it all in, armed with her pencil and paper, was Sybille Bedford – who wastes no time complaining about the claustrophobia of Courtroom 1 at the Old Bailey. With her trademark w...