The Seraphim Room

Description

The Seraphim Room is the story of Lilian and Emily, two half-sisters who live together under the watch of their domineering father. Together they whittle their days away under the claustrophobic roof of the dusty and decaying Chilvester House. Shut away from the wider world, it looks like the two siblings might grow to be old spinsters together. That is until Emily encounters the charming Christopher Honythorne on a rare evening out. Emily basks in her new-found freedom and realises that there is a whole other world beyond the isolated existence she has experienced. But when Emily quickly becomes infatuated with Christopher, their tangled interactions could soon bring more misery than joy to Emily's secluded life. Particularly as Chilvester House already has a very unfortunate life expectancy for the women who live under its roof . . .

Edith Olivier (1872-1948) was born in the Rectory at Wilton, Wiltshire, in the late 1870s. Her father was Rector there and later Canon of Salisbury. She came from an old Huguenot family which had been living in England for several generations, and was one of a family of ten children. She was educated at home until she won a scholarship to St Hugh's College, Oxford. Her first novel, The Love Child, was published in 1927 and there followed four works of fiction: As Far as Jane's Grandmother's (1928), The Triumphant Footman (1930), Dwarf's Blood (1930) and The Seraphim Room (1932). Her works of non-fiction were The Eccentric Life of Alexander Cruden (1934), Mary Magdalen (1934), Country Moods and Tenses (1941), Four Victorian Ladies of Wiltshire (1945), Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady (1945), her autobiography, Without Knowing Mr. Walkley (1938) and, posthumously published, Wiltshire (1951). Edith Olivier spent her life within twenty miles of her childhood home, and died in her beloved Wilton in 1948.