October 11 – November 1 2023
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners” Virginia Woolf
All the writers in this short series draw inspiration and support from those closest to them. Where would Jane Austen have been without the support of her sister Cassandra, or Virginia Woolf without the stimulus of Vanessa Bell? Burney, Austen and Woolf are fortunate in their sisters. With no close siblings, for a good twenty years Johnson and Thrale find reliable inspiration and entertainment in each other. For each of these writers it is true that, in the famous words of John Donne, no man is an island.