Why did a gifted writer like Sylvia Plath stumble into a marriage that drove her to suicide? Why did Hilda Doolittle want to marry Ezra Pound when she was attracted to women? Why did Simone de Beauvoir pimp for Jean-Paul Sartre? The list of the damages done in each of these sexual relationships is long, but each provokes the same question: would these women have become the writers they became without these literary relationships?

Incorporating research using diaries, letters, and journals, Lesley McDowell examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners they felt themselves to be. Fascinating and insightful, Between the Sheets is a marvelous read and an invaluable addition to the literature of feminism.



LESLEY MCDOWELL writes for the Times Literary Supplement and the Independent. She is also the author of a novel, The Picnic, published in 2007. McDowell earned a Ph.D. from St. Andrews for her work on James Joyce.