Book description
Bruges, bedecked with stiff Madonnas . . . London, going wild in the
Twenties . . . Paris, where white powdered faces gleam from cafe tables
. . .
Against these backdrops unfolds the life of Claud Pickering as he
describes his boyhood, dominated by his step-mother Helena, and the
complications and compromises, the yearnings and expectations of young
adulthood. It is the story of his failed marriage, and it is the story
of his passion for Cecil, a singer, who haunts Claud with all the
elusiveness - and the destructiveness - of a dream.
Too Dear For My Possessing
is the first volume in the 'Helena' trilogy, in which Pamela Hansford
Johnson demonstrates superbly her considerable powers as a novelist. The
story continues in An Avenue of Stone
and concludes in A Summer To Decide
.
Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote 27 novels across genres as diverse as
romance, comedy and tragedy. An incredibly readable and literary author,
who deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation, Bello has brought
18 of Johnson's books back into print. Pamela Hansford Johnson was
born in 1912 and gained recognition with her first novel, This Bed Thy
Centre, published in 1935. She wrote 27 novels. Her themes centred on
the moral responsibility of the individual in their personal and social
relations. The fictional genres she used ranged from romantic comedy
(Night and Silence, Who Is Here) and high comedy (The Unspeakable
Skipton) to tragedy (The Holiday Friend) and the psychological study of
cruelty (An Error of Judgement). Her last novel, A Bonfire, was
published in the year of her death, 1981. She was a critic as well as a
novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy Compton-Burnett; Six
Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her reputation as a leading
Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play, Corinth House (1954), a work
of social criticism arising out of the Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967),
and a book of essays, Important to Me (1974). She received honorary
degrees from six universities and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature. She was awarded the C. B.E. in 1975. Pamela Hansford
Johnson, who had two children by her first marriage with journalist
Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow. Their son Philip was born
in 1952.
