Alison Lurie (Bishop) was born in Chicago on 3 September 1926. She received the A.B. degree from Radcliffe College in 1947 and the following year married Jonathan Peale Bishop, Jr. They have three sons. She was the recipient of Yaddo Foundation Fellowships in 1963, 1964, and 1965, the year she was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition to being a housewife, she has also worked as a ghost writer and librarian. In 1968 she joined the English faculty at Cornell University, where her husband is a professor of English; she currently holds the rank of associate professor, teaching courses in narrative writing and children's literature. Her first work of fiction was published in 1962, and since then she has enjoyed a steadily increasing critical reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her association with institutions of higher learning has profoundly influenced her writings, for both her experiences and her observations as an undergraduate and...