Bailey, Hilary

(British, 1936–)

Hilary Bailey was born in Kent and educated at Cambridge. She has continued working as a literary journalist while producing her novels. Begin with All the Days of My Life (1984), which is set, like most of her fiction, in London. The novel evokes change in the 1950s and 1960s in following the fortunes of its nouveaux riches characters. In The Cry from Street to Street (1992) the heroine is a former brothel-keeper who moves through a Victorian underworld in which Jack the Ripper is at large. Frankenstein's Bride (1995) finds Mary Shelley's hero in London, pursued by nemesis after he has succumbed to his monster's demand for a female companion. After the Cabaret (1998) is another inventive sequel, in which Christopher Isherwood's creation Sally Bowles returns to her native London in wartime.

Emma Tennant, Penelope

Mortimer  DH