E. M. Delafield (Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture Dashwood), one of the most prolific writers of fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, published novels, plays, story collections, and volumes of miscellaneous plays and nonfiction. Her more than forty books and numerous essays and sketches in magazines (particularly Time and Tide and Punch) appeared from World War I to the middle of World War II. In her twenty-six years of writing, hardly a year passed without the publication of at least one new book. Nearly all of her books sold moderately well in both British and American editions and received favorable reviews. In addition to writing novels, Delafield served as a director of the weekly news magazine Time and Tide. She was still producing books at her usual rate when, at the age of fifty-three, she collapsed while delivering a lecture at Oxford University and died...