Instead of a Letter

Despite her family's ailing finances, Diana Athill's childhood - spent in a lovely house in Norfolk - was blissful. In 1932, she fell in love with Paul: an undergraduate who tutored her younger brother. Within several years, she had moved to Oxford to study and they were engaged to be married. Then everything fell apart in the cruellest possible way.

Athill's debut is also her most personal: a dissection of personal tragedy and the struggle to rebuild her life amid severe disappointment and loneliness. Unfolding throughout the Second World War, Instead of a Letter is an inspiring story of love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and a testament to her strength of character - her vivacity, honesty and perspicacity.

About the author

Diana Athill was born in 1917. She helped André Deutsch establish the publishing company that bore his name and worked as an editor for Deutsch for four decades. Athill's distinguished career as an editor is the subject of her acclaimed memoir Stet. She is the author of seven further volumes of memoirs, Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, Yesterday Morning, Make Believe, Somewhere Towards the End, Alive, Alive Oh!, A Florence Diary, and a collection of letters, Instead of a Book, all published by Granta. Her only novel, Don't Look At Me Like That, was first published in 1967. In January 2009, she won the Costa Biography Award for Somewhere Towards the End, and was presented with an OBE. She died in January 2019.

Product details

• Authors: Diana (Y) Athill, Diana Athill, Athill Diana
• Assisted by: Ashworth Andrea (Introduction)
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 28.02.2022
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries
• EAN: 9781783787432
• ISBN: 978-1-78378-743-2
• Pages: 240
• Dimensions (packing): 12.9 x 19.8 x 1.4 cm
• Weight (packing): 173 g
• Subjects: England, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, Slouching towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion, White Album, Memoirs, Autobiography: business & industry, Matt Haig, Second World War, 1939-1945, publishing industry, Tessa Hadley, The comfort book, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs, Maggie O’Farrell, the past, year of magical thinking, reasons to stay alive, Late in the Day, hadley freeman, House of Glass, let me tell you what I mean, motherwell, The Little Virtues, deborah orr, I Am, I Am, I Am, Natalia Ginzberg, family lexicon