Nicola Beauman

This is the first biography of one of the greatest English writers of the last century. Betty Coles became Elizabeth Taylor upon her marriage in 1936. Her first novel "At Mrs. Lippincote's "appeared in the same year (1945) as the actress Elizabeth Taylor was appearing in "National Velvet." Over the next thirty years, "the other Elizabeth Taylor" lived and worked in Buckinghamshire and published several titles of fiction. Nicola Beauman's biography draws on a wealth of hitherto undiscovered material. Nicola Beauman is the author of "A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914-39," "Cynthia Asquith," and "Morgan: a Life of EM Forster." She founded Persephone Books in 1999.

Ranging through a variety of themes such as the Great War, the servant problem, psycho-analysis, sexuality and feminism, this work examines their effects upon the characters created by authors as diverse as Virginia Woolf, EM Delafield and Elinor Glyn. It produces a picture of the lives of middle-class women during this period.