A House and Its Head

Ivy Compton-Burnett author Hilary Mantel editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Pushkin Press

Published:25th Mar '21

£10.99

Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.

A House and Its Head cover

It is Christmas Day, 1885, and the Edgeworths are at each other's throats again. Duncan holds his wife and children captive to his authoritarian whims; every day brings fresh struggles for power. Before breakfast is over, there will be presents in the fire. When illness strikes the family, volatile tensions are unleashed that result in scandal, adultery and murder, while a crowd of gossiping neighbours watches gleefully on. A brutally funny demolition of patriarchal authority, A House and Its Head confirms Ivy Compton-Burnett's status as one of the unique stylists of twentieth-century English fiction, and its greatest chronicler of the violent dysfunction of families.

'Ivy Compton-Burnett is one of the most original, artful and elegant writers of our century. To read her for the first time is a singular experience' - Hilary Mantel

'As much a part of our great 20th-century literary heritage as Virginia Woolf or Elizabeth Bowen... She writes wonderfully, giving her often ghastly characters mordantly witty lines worthy of Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde' - Guardian

ISBN: 9781911590392

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

320 pages