Margaret Forster

A masterpiece of biography and storytelling where subject and author are perfectly matched. Rebecca was published in 1938 and brought its author instant international acclaim, capturing the popular imagination with its haunting atmosphere of suspense and mystery. But the more fame this and her other books brought, the more reclusive Daphne du Maurier became. Margaret Forster’s award-winning biography could hardly be more worthy of its subject. Drawing on private letters and papers, and with the unflinching co-operation of Daphne du Maurier’s family, Margaret Forster explores the secret drama of her life — the stifling relationship with her father, actor-manager Gerald du Maurier; her troubled marriage to war hero and royal aide, “Boy” Browning; her wartime love affair; her passion for Cornwall and her deep friendships with the last of her father’s actress lovers, Gertrude Lawrence, and with an aristocratic American woman. Most significant of all, Margaret Forster ingeniously strips away the relaxed and charming façade to lay bare the true workings of a complex and emotional character whose passionate and often violent stories mirrored her own fantasy life more than anyone could have imagined.

Daphne Du Maurier

When Julia was eight, she was asked to be a bridesmaid at her beautiful cousin Iris's wedding. Her mother saw this as a chore, but Julia was thrilled. When the time came, even the fact that her bridesmaid's dress didn't fit, and was plain cream rather than the pink she'd hoped for, couldn't ruin the day. But after this, things began to go wrong for Julia, starting with an episode involving her cousin's baby, a pram, and a secret trip round the block.

The Unknown Bridesmaid

A historical novel rekindles the passion between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning as Barrett's housekeeper and closest friend tells the story of their elopement and of her devoted service to her lady. Reader's Guide included. Reissue. 25,000 first printing.

A Novel

Lady's Maid

This is the story of the day-to-day emotional demands of impossible domestic situations. It is a story of female courage, where black comedy turns to disturbing pathos revolving around the rights of an indomitable woman.

Have the Men Had Enough?

A classic Margaret Forster novel with the same satisfying appeal as her bestselling Diary of an Ordinary Woman — the story of an actual early 20th century painting and its fictional adventures through the century and of the women whose lives it touches. From the Hardcover edition.

Keeping the World Away

Hidden Lives

A mother leaves her baby daughter a mysterious, sealed box before she dies. Years later, when Catherine opens her mother's box - the 'Memory Box' - she finds it full of strange, unexplained objects, carefully wrapped and numbered, like clues to a puzzle. Catherine never knew her mother, but her idealized image as the 'perfect', beautiful and talented woman that the rest of her family remembers, has cast a long shadow over her life. As she tries to solve the mystery of the box of secrets, she is pulled into the past and to her mother's story, which reveals a woman far more complex, surprising and dangerous than the family legend has allowed. And in turn Catherine, fiercely independent and self-absorbed, discovers unexpected truths about herself.

The Memory Box

Georgy Girl

Margaret Forster, in this engaging, intriguing novel, about a young woman and two grandmothers, uncovers the shocking truths that family history reveals.The curiously named Isamay, a would-be academic, is trying to write a coherent thesis about grandmot

Isa & May

Roman

Ein Zimmer, sechs Frauen und ein Bild

When the single mother of a young child is killed, the battle lines are drawn. On one side are Christabel's indomitable Scottish grandmother, and Isobel, the unsentimental narrator. On the other, are the foster mother and the social workers. Everyone suffers, but the main casualty is the child.

The Battle for Christabel

Rosemary is enraged by what she sees as her mother’s distortions of the truth about their family story. A picture emerges of a family in all its complexities, and of the changing world that shaped their lives.

Private Papers

Angela Bradbury's 'Poor Mother' : delicate, humble, permanently disappointed, has made endless sacrifices for her family, for which they can never quite be grateful enough. 'You can't please your mother', as her father says. Even now, just one phone call from Mother can send Angela spiralling into guilt, self-recrimination and doubts over her own abilities as a mother. Worryingly, Angela's relationship with her own daughter Sadie seems to be going the same way, as Sadie develops into a sullen, unresponsive adolescent. It seems that motherhood is a heritage of disappointments and broken promises. But Angela is determined that, somehow, her relationship with Sadie will be different.

Mother Can You Hear Me?

A brilliant follow-up to HIDDEN LIVES, this account takes up the story of her gritty, northern father, Arthur. Margaret's father was not a man to answer questions - least of all questions about life and death. So she attempts to answer them for herself, as she looks back at his life and indomitable character - from the perspective of his ninth decade - evoking incidents from her childhood, his working life and stubborn old age, trying to make sense of their largely unspoken relationship, and of his tenacious hold on life, and on his family. His life, and that of her sister-in-law, Marion, were ordinary, and apparently unremarkable, but when faced with death lives like these become strangely precious, Margaret Forster marvels at the tenacity of the human spirit, at its capacity to fight to the bitter end.

Precious Lives

Margaret Forster presents the 'edited' diary of a woman, born in 1901, whose life spans the twentieth century. On the eve of the Great War, Millicent King begins to keep her journal and vividly records the dramas of everyday life in a family touched by war, tragedy, and money troubles. From bohemian London to Rome in the 1920s her story moves on to social work and the build-up to another war, in which she drives ambulances through the bombed streets of London. Here is twentieth-century woman in close-up coping with the tragedies and upheavals of women's lives from WWI to Greenham Common and beyond. A triumph of resolution and evocation, this is a beautifully observed story of an ordinary woman's life - a narrative where every word rings true.

Diary Of An Ordinary Woman

Only one person knows what happened that day... Julia was the only person who knew what happened that day. But she didn’t tell the police. And then it was too late. Now, years later, her secret looms large. Is it really too late? And if she does tell, can she bear the consequences?

The story of Elizabeth Barrett's maid, her complex relationship with her mistress and her dramatic role in the most famous elopement in history.

Catherine's mother died when Catherine was just a baby girl, leaving nothing but her perfect reputation to live up to. Or so she thought. But then Catherine finds a box addressed to her, filled with objects seemingly without meaning - three feathers, an exotic seashell, a painting, a mirror, two prints, an address book, a map, a hat, a rucksack and a necklace. And while she's busy playing detective trying to find out who her mother was, she finds out more about herself than she ever really wanted to know. Secrets are discovered, truths uncovered, and Catherine realises that maybe there was something more to her mother, something that her familiy has kept from her. How long a shadow can a dead woman cast?

Isamay's unusual name comes from her two very different grandmothers, Isa and May, who were both present at her birth and who have both formed and influenced her whole life in very particular ways. Now almost thirty, Isamay is trying to write a thesis about grandmothers in history but is instead constantly ambushed by the startling secrets her own family has been keeping. When disturbing truths are revealed that force Isamay to examine her own certainties, will her grandmothers be able to build a bridge across the generations?

Isa and May

Tara Fraser leaves London to start a new life in a Cumbrian town selected at random. She plans to obliterate her past, which contains a shocking event that had serious consequences, by becoming a completely different personality from her previous volatile self. She is going to be quiet, even dull, and very private. But one of her new neighbours, Nancy, is intrigued by her. She wants to become her friend. Equally determined not to be discarded are three old friends who Tara feels let her down when she most needed them. Tara fights to keep herself to herself, but can she do it? And does she really want to? Slowly, reluctantly, she discovers the dangers of trying to suppress the past and reject other people.

Margaret Forster

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