A Life of One's Own

'A beautiful, deeply philosophical book about reading as a form of existential consolation' Literary Review 'Acute and tender . . . alive with discovery and desire' Observer 'A meditation, by turns glorious and aching, on what it means to be a woman and to try to be free' Amia Srinivasan 'A gift to readers of all ages. Engaging . . . poignant . . . uplifting' Washington Post 'I adored this book . . . a generous, enlivening work, destined to be passed from friend to friend for a long time to come' Megan Hunter In this intricate, intimate and dazzlingly original group biography, Joanna Biggs looks to eight revolutionary women writers who each sought freedom and intellectual fulfilment in their lifetimes and asks: why is it so important for women to read one another? By illuminating the motivations, desires and disappointments of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Biggs lights a way past the traditional goals and expectations of femininity and towards a life lived generously and joyfully for oneself.

'A beautiful, deeply philosophical book about reading as a form of existential consolation' Literary Review 'Acute and tender . . . alive with discovery and desire' Observer 'A meditation, by turns glorious and aching, on what it means to be a woman and to try to be free' Amia Srinivasan 'A gift to readers of all ages. Engaging . . . poignant . . . uplifting' Washington Post 'I adored this book . . . a generous, enlivening work, destined to be passed from friend to friend for a long time to come' Megan Hunter In this intricate, intimate and dazzlingly original group biography, Joanna Biggs looks to eight revolutionary women writers who each sought freedom and intellectual fulfilment in their lifetimes and asks: why is it so important for women to read one another? By illuminating the motivations, desires and disappointments of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Biggs lights a way past the traditional goals and expectations of femininity and towards a life lived generously and joyfully for oneself.

'This is what I really want. I want to discover ways to discriminate the important things in human life. I want to find ways of getting past this blind fumbling with existence .' - Marion Milner, from A Life of One’s Own. How often do we really ask ourselves, 'What will make me happy? What do I really want from life?' In A Life of One’s Own Marion Milner, a renowned British psychoanalyst, artist and autobiographer, takes us on an extraordinary and compelling seven-year inward journey to discover what it is that makes her happy. On its first publication, W. H. Auden found the book 'as exciting as a detective story' and, as Milner searches out clues, the reader quickly becomes involved in the chase. Using her own personal diaries, she analyses moments of everyday life that can bring surprising joy, such as walking, listening to music, and drawing. She also records, in a disarmingly clear and insightful manner, the struggle between the urge to order and control one’s thoughts and standing back to let them wander where they may. A pioneering account of lived experience that also anticipates the contemporary phenomenon of mindfulness, A Life of One’s Own is a great adventure in thinking and living whose insights remain as fresh today as they were on the book’s first publication in the 1930s. This Routledge Classics edition includes a revised Introduction by Rachel Bowlby.

'This is what I really want. I want to discover ways to discriminate the important things in human life. I want to find ways of getting past this blind fumbling with existence .' - Marion Milner, from A Life of One’s Own. How often do we really ask ourselves, 'What will make me happy? What do I really want from life?' In A Life of One’s Own Marion Milner, a renowned British psychoanalyst, artist and autobiographer, takes us on an extraordinary and compelling seven-year inward journey to discover what it is that makes her happy. On its first publication, W. H. Auden found the book 'as exciting as a detective story' and, as Milner searches out clues, the reader quickly becomes involved in the chase. Using her own personal diaries, she analyses moments of everyday life that can bring surprising joy, such as walking, listening to music, and drawing. She also records, in a disarmingly clear and insightful manner, the struggle between the urge to order and control one’s thoughts and standing back to let them wander where they may. A pioneering account of lived experience that also anticipates the contemporary phenomenon of mindfulness, A Life of One’s Own is a great adventure in thinking and living whose insights remain as fresh today as they were on the book’s first publication in the 1930s. This Routledge Classics edition includes a revised Introduction by Rachel Bowlby.