Angela Lamb, a British novelist, has sent her boisterous daughter Gerda to boarding school. Now she can fly to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are in the private Berg Collection there. When a bedraggled-looking Virginia herself materializes in the library one day and is instantly evicted, a stunned Angela follows her heroine into the streets of Manhattan. As Virginia scams bookshops with 'rare signed editions', Angela is...

Using Virginia Woolf and four of her servants as a jumping off point, Alison Light explores the extraordinary world of the domestic servant in the first half of the 20th century.