Forgotten authors

n 1983, when was reprinted by Virago, Penelope Fitzgerald described it an excellent example of a ‘good bad book.’ She felt its ‘good-bad enticement’ at once, she wrote in the : ‘I know that the 15-year-old Tessa, graceless, witty and shabby, is the Undine or Constant Waif and she will end up in a shady rooming-house, and die for love.’ Actually, the under-age nymph does not precisely die of love but of a pre-existing heart condition which is set off by trying to open the bedroom window. But nonetheless, in true good-bad book