A Notable Woman The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt Synopsis
In April 1925 at the age of fifteen, Jean Lucey Pratt started a journal that she kept until just a few days before her death in 1986, producing over a million words in 45 exercise books. What emerges is a portrait of a truly unique, spirited woman and writer.
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Jean Lucey Pratt, Simon Garfield Press Reviews
'Delightful ... an extraordinary woman with a dry, wicked sense of humour and such a longing for love and recognition. I inhaled the 700 pages and still wanted more' Red
'The most moving and important book I read this year by a mile: funny, tender and gripping' -- Rachel Cooke, New Statesman
'It's not only that Jean is a good writer: observant, funny and rather lyrical. Nor is it that she is so honest ... Rather, it's that her journals, unfettered and intimate, offer up a whole life' Observer
'The sort of reading that will have you grip the arm of your chair in joy' -- Alexandra Heminsley, The Debrief
'Spend Christmas with Jean Lucey Pratt, the siren of Slough: you will not regret or forget it ... wholly absorbing and deeply entertaining' -- Hilary Mantel
About Jean Lucey Pratt, Simon Garfield
Jean Lucey Pratt was born in 1909 in Wembley, Middlesex and lived much of her life in a small cottage on the edge of Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire. She was a trainee architect, she was a publicist, she gardened, she took in lodgers, she read copiously, she wrote criticism, and in later years she ran a bookshop. But above all, she kept track of her life in the most lyrical of ways, from the age of 15 until just a few days before her death in 1986.
Simon Garfield is the author of sixteen acclaimed books of non-fiction including To the Letter, On the Map, Just My Type and Mauve. His study of AIDS in Britain, The End of Innocence, won the Somerset Maugham prize. www.simongarfield.com
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