[froster]

She seems to be rather a forgotten lady today, but Sybille Bedford made quite a name for herself during her prime. A half-Jewish German expat in France, and friend of Aldous and Maria Huxley (who actually arranged a marriage of convenience for her to keep her from being deported back to Nazi Germany), Bedford ended up in America where she wrote several works of "sophisticated" fiction, biography and memoir. No lesser a talent than Evelyn Waugh found her first novel, A LEGACY, "new, cool, witty and elegant". After Huxley's death in 1963 she was invited by his widow to write his biography, first published in 1973 and described by Stephen Spender as "one of the masterpieces of biography". The book that places her in the top tier of Lesbian fiction, A Compass Error, depicts the erotic education of a young woman during the 1930's, in her very first sexual relationship, with the enchanting wife of a celebrated artist on the coast of Provence. It is sensual, unabashed, and completely non-judgmental, and is worthy of rediscovery. Ms. Bedford died in 2006 having lived to the ripe old age,of 94-- evidently a happy, fulfilled, un-closeted dyke. She and her work should be better known.