Gillian E. Hanscombe was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1945 but lived much of her life in
England. She is an author, teacher, poet, and activist who is well known for works focusing
on feminist and LGBTQ+ studies. Her most well-known work is "Between Friends," a fictional
1982 epistolary novel about four women writing to one another.
The focus of this collection is Hanscombe's 1982 novel "The Art of Life," which is about
the feminist movement and Dorothy Richardson's autobiographical 13-book series,
"Pilgrimage". Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) was an English author and early adopter of the
stream-of-consciousness style. She saw her "Pilgrimage" series as separate chapters of one
long novel.
