Synopsis In THE VIRGIN IN THE GARDEN, Byatt begins her series of four novels about the startlingly intellectual Potter family. In this first installment, it is the early '50s, the war is just over, and Elizabeth II has just been crowned queen of England. The plot revolves around an amateur dramatic production of the life of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, and ends as a kind of coming-of-age novel in which Frederica, the most ambitious of the Potter children, begins to realize the necessity of escaping from her smothering family.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1992-01-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 428 pages | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 12.8 oz |
Publisher's Note The Virgin in the Garden is a wonderfully erudite entertainment in which enlightenment and sexuality, Elizabethan drama and contemporary comedy, intersect richly and unpredictably.
The tumultuous events in this tale of a brilliant, eccentric and fatefully divided family begin with the staging of a play about Elizabeth I and come to a shattering climax sure to keep Byatt fans spellbound.
Industry Reviews "A highly intellectual operation...Large, complex, ambitious, humming with energy and ideas..." Iris Murdoch
"I had always intended to be a university teacher, and have in my possession an unfinished thesis on 17th century religious allegory, which was interrupted by marriage, children, and writing a novel." A. S. Byatt
"Her novels, like her life, are dominated by an absorbing, discriminating mind which finds intellectual passions as vibrant and consuming as emotional ones."
"Byatt is a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being."
| See an error? Submit a change request |