The ballad and the source

Rosamond. Lehmann

Set in Edwardian England, the book deals with the relationship between Rebecca, a young girl, and Sibyl Jardine, a complicated and domineering elderly woman. Contemporary reviewers compared the novel to the work of Henry James, though the book's feminism was then considered unfashionable. Lehmann returned to the character of Rebecca in her last novel, A Sea-Grape Tree (1976), which followed her as an adult dealing with betrayal by a married lover.