Susan Hill's career as a writer has taken some interesting and surprising turns since the publication of her first novel in 1961. The Enclosure was actually written when Hill was only about eighteen years old. Although she dismisses her first two novels, claiming that "neither was any good," she continued to write copiously until age thirty-two. Between 1968 and 1974 she produced six novels and two collections of short stories, all of which met with critical approbation. In 1975 she married Oxford professor Stanley Wells and did not write another novel for sixteen years. Her marriage and the birth of her first daughter, Jessica, one year later transformed Hill's career.

Between 1975 and 1991 Hill wrote books about gardening, children's books, appreciations of the English countryside, and book reviews. Her shift from critically acclaimed fiction to domestic writing mirrored the changes in her personal life. In the years during and following the pursuit of...