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“... of essays on Rivière, and edited by Foucault). And, in an article entitled ‘Quietly, the First Lady builds a literary room of her own’ in the New York Times, Laura Bush assured the nation that ‘there’s nothing political about American literature.’ It’s pretty startling for us fledglings down here, feet on the ground in the real ...”

“... or no, the dictionary is not a book of morals. Winchester records Dr Johnson’s riposte to the lady who noted his omission of obscenities; but British prudery kept cunt and fuck (though not piss, which was biblically sanctified, or shit) out of not only the OED but all other general dictionaries until Burchfield’s A-G volume of 1972, though fifty years ...”

“... prostitute called Pacifica. The even more extraordinary Miss Goering – the other serious lady of the title – develops, despite her fabulous wealth, into the most unlikely gangster’s moll ever. The two friends meet again towards the end of the novel in a New York restaurant as Miss Goering waits for her thuggish paramour to conclude some shady ...”

“... how to play with children? You are mad, we can no longer have you here. You must go.’ Maybe this lady could be offered a job as a publisher’s reader, or a fiction ...”

“... the coffee boil over while groping the chambermaid: ‘Carry up your Coffee boldly, and, when your Lady finds it too weak, and examines you whether it has not run over, deny the Fact absolutely; swear you put in more Coffee than ordinary … because your Mistress had Ladies with her.’ What would Vanessa have made of ...”

“... Cornwell) was an Australian gold rush millionaire, nicknamed ‘Princess Midas’ and ‘the Lady of the Nuggets’, who purchased the Sunday Times seemingly on a whim and installed her lover as editor. She also established the Ladies Kennel Association in 1895, a challenge to the authority of the male-only Kennel Club. (The duchess of Newcastle was ...”

“... where the rector’s wife dumped him on the housekeeper or butler while she confabulated with the Lady Bountiful at the Great Hall. There was some basis to Jeeves country, and PG himself was like Jane Austen and many other people in having some grand though distant connections at one end and ordinary humble ones at the other. None of that seems to have ...”

“... where sat the cast of ghouls who ran the operation. Transmission times were decided by a dragon lady called Madame Awatiff, who had a voice that could cut through steel, wore saucer-size glasses magnifying her eyes and dressed in glamorous Fifties frippery. She responded best to flattery. The chief censor was the aptly-named Dr Saad, who derived a perverse ...”

“... Jennifer Potter’s title takes place in the Arabian sands. It’s made in 1910 by Elinor Grace, a lady archaeologist intent on reaching the site of Mareb, thought to be associated with the Queen of Sheba. At first it looks as if Miss Grace is simply an intrepid and eccentric Englishwoman of the period, used to overawing inferior races by upper-class manners ...”

“... the monstrousness of mass unemployment on starvation levels of relief. Somehow the spectacle of Lady Astor seeking to instruct penniless women in the art of making a nourishing soup out of hot water and a few carrots seemed even more offensive than plain indifference. Needless to say, such moments were fairly rare, since a good deal of Parliamentary ...”

“... story is of how, in December 1938, a biographer of George Eliot received a letter from an old lady of 85, Ethel Welsh, née Lewes, confidently asserting that she was the daughter of George Henry Lewes by his wife Agnes, and that any suggestion that her mother had behaved improperly was false: ‘My Mother was a most perfect Mother.’ Ethel had also loved ...”

“... Zahl for whom Rose works. The violent end of the affair leaves Rose as nurse-companion to the old lady – a caring role which she vainly sought when she first went to New York. Sustained by the indulgent company of the regulars at her Fulham pub, and having made her confession, she seems happier with herself, at last. It’s been a long haul, however, and ...”

“... daisy flower’, a deft blend of elevated tone and low purport, where the lover dozes off and the lady slips away to find somebody more easily aroused. ‘Thus after her cold she caught a heat’: well might he sigh, well might he groan! ‘Hierusalem, my happy home’ is missing (Quiller-Couch dated his version 1601), and so is George Herbert, who was only ...”

“... an Oxford college. A more plausible scene would have him growling greetings to the black cleaning lady at a quarter to six in the morning of a dreary January, as he comes in to finish an article about the night soil trade in 18th-century London, in an academic institution that is only just managing to contain him. And he it. Porter’s industry has taken him ...”

“... in opportunity or pay did not worry her. She did, of course, get reviewers who wrote about ‘lady novelists’ as if ‘gentleman novelists’ were sexless, but these were mere flea bites. Naomi’s demand to express female experience in full, the approach which shocked publishers, reviewers and the respectable of Carradale, came from her emancipation ...”