Despite there being more legal provision for women seeking divorce, the suggestion of it remained shocking, providing the central focus for Young’s novel.Īuthor: E. I highly recommend Chatterton Square newly reissued by the British Library women writers series if you haven’t read it. I love EH Young and have read most of her novels (a couple of very early ones yet to find). Framed by the advance of the Second World War, the subtle mechanics of marriage and love are laid bare through the observation of three of the marital options open to the mid-century woman: unmarried, separated, miserably married.Ĭhatterton Square was published ten years after calls for a change in divorce law resulted in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1937. Lovely review, I read this years ago, and I remember it with great affection. ‘You don’t mean you’re going to divorce him?’ Miss Spanner said with horror.Ī sophisticated, emotive novel, Chatterton Square concerns the complex web of relationships between two neighbouring families, the Blacketts and the Frasers.

The story is relatively slight- but when the last page is turned, you have lived yourself in Chatterton Square, enjoyed the freedom, the spontaneity of the Frasers' household, hated the tensions and strains of the Blacketts'. Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform. Chatterton Square by Young (118 results) You searched for: Author: young, Title: chatterton square. This is her first novel since 1938- and again her magic, illusive as it is, survived.

Chatterton Square by E.H. Young