Hardly a prolific writer, Elizabeth Mavor's four novels and two biographies, written over the last two decades, nevertheless represent a significant contribution to contemporary English letters. Her novels demonstrate a variety of fictional techniques as well as an ability to blend the world of nature and myth with the ordinary lives of men and women. She is particularly adept at presenting the dual nature of sex (that is, male/female attitudes and feelings in the same person), especially as experienced by women. Her accomplishments received one kind of recognition when her fourth novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1973.

Descended from William Congreve and a niece of the contemporary writer James Bridie, Elizabeth Mavor was born on 17 December 1927 in Glasgow, where her father was a director in the firm of Mavor and Coulson. She was brought up in an old-fashioned way, with nannies and governesses, and her...