Olive Moore is one of the great undiscovered novelists of the twentieth century. Between 1929 and 1934 (between the ages of 24 and 29), she published four brilliant books that earned her a reputation as an enfant terrible of British literature. After 1934, however, nothing was heard of her and, as a result, she is unknown to contemporary readers and critics. This omnibus edition of her complete works should establish her as one of the most provocative writers of our century.

Three of the four books reprinted here are novels: Celestial Seraglio (1929), a wicked account of coming of age in a Belgian convent school; Spleen (1930), about a woman who goes into self-imposed exile in Italy after giving birth to a deformed child; and Fugue (1932), the story of a clever young newspaper woman, pregnant and unmarried, suffocating amidst the English literati in Alsace. All three novels are characterized by biting wit and innovative approaches to structure and chronology, and read like a cross between Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes.

The fourth book is The Apple Is Bitten Again (1934), a dazzling and disturbing collection of observations and aphorisms on modern civilization and art. A biographical sketch of this brilliant but enigmatic writer concludes the volume.