Rosamond Lehmann (1901-1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria's funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century. Carmen Callil was born and educated in Melbourne, Australia, and came to the UK in 1960. She began working in publishing five years later and in 1972 founded the Virago Press, which she continued to chair until 1995. Her first book, Bad Faith: A History of Family and Fatherland, was published by Vintage in 2007. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.