The Young Visiters - Daisy Ashford

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Biographie:
Daisy Ashford (1881-1972) was an English writer best known for her satirical novel of high society, The Young Visiters, which she wrote at the age of nine. Born to a Catholic family in Surrey, Ashford was largely educated at home. From the age of four until her early teens, she composed novels, plays, and short fiction for the private amusement of those around her. Following the death of her mother, Ashford rediscovered the manuscript of The Young Visiters in the family papers. With the encouragement of influential editor Frank Swinnerton, the novel was published in 1919 by Chatto & Windus, becoming an immediate bestseller. In 1920, Daisy Ashford: Her Book, a follow-up collection of her fiction, appeared. Averse to her accidental literary celebrity, Ashford did not publish any further work during her lifetime. She married James Devlin in 1920, with whom she had three children, and resided in Norwich until her death....

Sommaire:
A sensational bestseller when it first appeared in 1919, The Young Visiters is a most unusual comedy of manners. Written when author Daisy Ashford was nine years old, this short novel charts the hapless Mr. Salteena's rise into British high society and the cost he pays for it. With him are a cast of vivid and eccentric characters: his young girlfriend Ethel Monticue, his conniving friend Bernard Clark, and a rather casual King Edward VII. Body image, class anxiety, age-gap relationships-very little is out of bounds for Ashford's withering observations. Included in this Paradise Editions reprint is the classic original introduction by Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie along with an afterword by acclaimed novelist Caleb Crain....