A House Unlocked

First edition. 8vo. Pp. x, 225. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Decorated endpapers, b/w line drawings by Harry Brockway illustrating chapter headings.

"I thought that I would see if the private life of a house could be made to bear witness to the public traumas of a century". Through the prism of her family's ancestral Somerset home, Golsoncott, bought by her grandparents in 1923, the author charts the changing social attitudes of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize with her first two novels for adults, The Road to Lichfield (1977) and According to Mark (1984), Lively then won it for Moon Tiger in 1987. "Lively's writing is a palimpsest of past and present on which flit scenes of England's changing mores and rituals. Highly recommended." –Library Journal (starred review)