As It Was in the Beginning

As It Was in the Beginning is a stunning example of Gertrude Trevelyan’s stylistic and imaginative daring. Taking place within the four walls of a nursing home private room, the book manages to encompass the entire span of one woman’s life. As Millicent, Lady Chesborough lays dying, her thoughts run backwards, through her romantic relationships and attempts to define herself, to her childhood and earliest memories. Through her example, Trevelyan attacks the limited and inherently disempowering choices available to even the most privileged women in the first decades of the 20th century. A work of rare imagination and psychological insight, As It Was in the Beginning has been out of print for 90 years and further demonstrates the importance of Gertrude Trevelyan’s work in the history of the English novel.'Compels one to go on reading by the admiration one feels for the author’s ingenuity and uncanny insight.' Leonora Eyles, Times Literary Supplement'Trevelyan has chosen a simple theme, but by her treatment of it she has produced an extremely original novel, a work of conscious art. It is a remarkable book.' Forrest Reid, Guardian