biographer, Helen Smith, has been both a great ally and generous source of information.
This book began life as a doctoral thesis. I am indebted to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council which made my doctoral research possible through the provision of a scholarship. I am grateful to my examiners, Frances Spalding and Giles Foden, for their invaluable constructive criticism. At the University of East Anglia, I owe an immeasurable debt to Jon Cook whose guidance and scholarship considerably enhanced my work.
I would also like to thank my agent Maggie Hanbury and, at Bloomsbury, Stephanie Duncan and Miranda Vaughan Jones. I have benefited enormously from their expertise and enthusiasm for the book.
Finally I thank my son Rafael and husband Tony Barnett for their forbearance during this long project. They have toleratedmy physical and mental absences and lived with David Garnett, on occasions, almost as closely as I have. Tony has not only accompanied me on research trips, but has been a constant and loving support. I thank him for all this, and for applying his intellectual scrutiny to every word I have written.
Needless to say any inaccuracies or mistakes are my own.
For permission to quote David Garnett, Constance Garnett, Edward Garnett and Nellie Heath I am indebted to the Estate of David Garnett. I am also indebted to Julian Bell and the Estate of Angelica Bell for permission to quote from her published writing and unpublished letters and to Henrietta Garnett for giving me permission to quote Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Burgo Partridge.
For other permissions to quote I gratefully acknowledge: Peter Ackroyd; Virginia Allen (Noel Olivier); Victoria Bacon (Edward Hyams); the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation; Betty May courtesy of a family member who wishes not to be named; Anne Chisholm; the Estate of John Dreyfus; the
Financial Times
; the Executors of the Estate of Michael Fordham; Guardian News & Media Ltd (
Guardian
and
Observer
); Adrian Goodman (Ottoline Morrell); Alastair Hamilton (Hamish Hamilton); Duff Hart-Davis (Rupert Hart-Davis); Anne Harvey (Eleanor Farjeon and Herbert Farjeon); David Higham Associates Ltd (the Estates of John Lehmann and T. H. White); Michael Holroyd; Lawrence James c/o the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency; Professor Simon Keynes (Geoffrey Keynes); Paul Levy; Desmond MacCarthy (Desmond MacCarthy); Susie Medley (Francis Birrell); the Executors of the Estate of Alix Meynell; the Executors of the Estate of Francis Meynell; Paul Morrison and Tom Morrison (Barbara Mackenzie-Smith); the
New Statesman
; News Syndication (
The Times, Sunday Times
and
The Times Literary Supplement
); MarkNorton (H.T.J. Norton); Dr Henry Oakeley (John Hayward); Janetta Parlade; the Arthur Ransome Literary Estate; Professor Stephen Rhys (Theadora Fordham); Andrew Roberts c/o Capel & Land Ltd; the Lord Sackville (Edward Sackville-West); the Earl of Sandwich (Rosemary Peto); the Scotsman Publications Ltd; the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust (A.W. Lawrence and T.E. Lawrence); the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (Mina Curtiss); the
Spectator
; the Estate of Adrian Stephen; the Estate of James Stern, c/o Imrie & Dervis; the Society of Authors as the Literary Representatives of the Estate of Julian Bell; the Society of Authors as the Literary Representatives of the Estate of Quentin Bell; the Society of Authors as agents of the Strachey Trust (Alix Strachey, James Strachey and Lytton Strachey); Tanya Stobbs (Sylvia Townsend Warner); Telegraph Media Group Limited (
Sunday Telegraph
); the University of Sussex and the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Leonard Woolf; Mrs R. Vellender (Edward Thomas); Caroline White (Rayne Garnett/Nickalls); John Worthen c/o the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency; Philip Ziegler (for
Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters
, Chatto & Windus, 2004) c/o The Random House Group and United Agents.
Quotes from Olive Garnettâs Diaries are property of Caroline