Reading My Mother

What influence do the books we read when we're growing up have on us? In this haunting memoir, Kathleen Jones, acclaimed biographer of Christina Rossetti and Katherine Mansfield, turns her forensic gaze on her own life - exploring how she fell in love with books, and how she overcame poverty, rural isolation, rigid class barriers and a tumultuous family, to overcome working class and gender stereotypes to become a feminist and then a writer.

With mixed Italian, Scottish and Irish heritage, ...