Mothers of the Mind

'These three portraits beautifully capture the variety and complexity of mother-daughter relationships.' - The Lady Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Plath are three of our most famous authors. This book tells in full the story of the remarkable mothers who shaped them. Julia Stephen, Clara Miller and Aurelia Plath were fascinating women in their own rights, and their relationships with their daughters were exceptional; they profoundly influenced the writers' lives, literature and attitude to feminism. Too often in the past Virginia, Agatha and Sylvia have been defined by their lovers - Mothers of the Mind redresses the balance by charting the complex, often contradictory, bond between mother and daughter. Drawing on sources from archives around the world and accounts from family and friends of the women, this book offers a fresh perspective on these iconic authors.

RACHEL TRETHEWEY read History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where she won the Philip Geddes Prize for student journalism. During her journalistic career she wrote features for the Daily Mail and Daily Express, and subsequently reviewed history books for The Independent. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has previously written The Churchill Girls (2021) about Winston's daughters. She lives in Devon.