On the recommendation of the scholar George (Dadie) Rylands, a central figure in the Bloomsbury set, Rosamond Lehmann sent her first novel,
Dusty Answer, as an unsolicited manuscript to the respected literary publishers Chatto & Windus. Within three weeks, Harold Raymond, one of the senior partners, wrote to tell her that three readers were agreed that the work showed “decided quality”, and that they wished to publish it. It is clear, however, that they had no idea that they were to have a world-wide best-seller on their list, and one moreover that would gain considerable critical respect. The most influential and widely quoted contemporary review came from the poet Alfred Noyes who declared it to be “the kind of novel that might have been written by Keats if Keats had been a young…
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Citation: Pollard, Wendy. "Dusty Answer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5475, accessed 25 April 2024.]
