Dusty Answer
Will be published approx. on 11. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-0-349-01795-2 (ISBN)
Description
ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE BRITISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
'The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers' THE TIMES
'It will consume you . . . transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read' JONATHAN COE
'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD
'Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . . '
A sensitive only child, Judith Earle has always been a little in love with the glamorous Fyfe boys who come to stay in the house next door. With the War over and Judith on the brink of going to Cambridge, the cousins arrive again - and she is caught once more in their spell. Falling hopelessly in love with Roddy, Judith's passionate entanglements - with each of the cousins, and with the charismatic Jennifer at Cambridge - will leave her forever changed. Dusty Answer traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love.
Lehmann's first novel was published to sensational acclaim in 1927 and became a landmark book of the interwar period, capturing the voice of a new generation.
'The lyrical, sensuous quality . . . puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers' THE TIMES
'It will consume you . . . transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read' JONATHAN COE
'She is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original' ELIZABETH JANE HOWARD
'Mamma was fast asleep at home, her spirit lapped in unconsciousness. Her dreams would not divine that her daughter had stolen out to meet a lover. And next door also they slept unawares, while one of them broke from the circle and came alone to clasp a stranger . . . '
A sensitive only child, Judith Earle has always been a little in love with the glamorous Fyfe boys who come to stay in the house next door. With the War over and Judith on the brink of going to Cambridge, the cousins arrive again - and she is caught once more in their spell. Falling hopelessly in love with Roddy, Judith's passionate entanglements - with each of the cousins, and with the charismatic Jennifer at Cambridge - will leave her forever changed. Dusty Answer traces with delicate nostalgia childhood friendships and the pangs of thwarted young love.
Lehmann's first novel was published to sensational acclaim in 1927 and became a landmark book of the interwar period, capturing the voice of a new generation.
Reviews / Votes
The lyrical, sensuous quality of her descriptive writing and her clear yet compassionate insight into individual psychology puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers * The Times * Lehmann's story is both universal and deliciously particular, like all the best coming-of-age stories. No one has written more brilliantly about having one's heart broken, about despair and longing, humiliation and hope: all the wretched thrilling chaos that accompanies growing up. Finding it at fifteen felt a little like stumbling upon magic. Miraculously, all these years and re-readings later, it still has that effect on me -- Harriet Lane * Independent * Beautifully written and observed, and an interesting representation of the ideas of and pressures upon a generation of intellectual women immediately after the Great War * Telegraph * [Lehman] is immensely readable, acute, passionate, funny and original -- Elizabeth Jane Howard It is not often that one can say with confidence of a first novel by a young writer that it reveals new possibilities for literature. But there are qualities in this book that mark it out as quite the most striking first novel of this generation . . . The modern young woman, with all her frankness and perplexities in the semi-pagan world of today, has never been depicted with more honesty, or with more exquisite art * Sunday Times * Lehmann has always written brilliantly of women in love, of mothers and daughters -- Margaret Drabble It will consume you entirely, transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read -- Jonathan Coe This is, indeed, one of the most charming and convincing studies of young womanhood that we have read for some time * Spectator * Whoever loves the earth, and especially whoever loves English earth, will drink delicious draughts from this book; for not only beauty, but the ache of beauty, is alive in it * Atlantic * The lyrical, sensuous quality of her descriptive writing and her clear yet compassionate insight into individual psychology puts her immediately into the front rank of English writers * THE TIMES * It will consume you entirely, transforming your whole inner life for the time it takes to read * Jonathan Coe *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-349-01795-2 (9780349017952)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.