Much of Kathleen Hale's early life is in distinct contrast to the books for which she is known. Her father, Charles Edward Hale, died when she was only five. When her mother, Ethel Alice Aylmer Hale, was unable to care for them, the three children were divided; Hale went to live with her grandparents and an insensitive aunt, with whom she felt terribly neglected, especially emotionally. After her mother was able to bring the children together again in Manchester in 1907, Hale never found the loving family for which she yearned and that she wrote about in the Orlando books. Her one outlet was art, a talent inspired at an early age by the works of Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham, though her drawings did not resemble theirs. After World War I her artwork was exhibited in a series of art exhibitions and reproduced in art journals. In 1926 she...