To generations of her admirers, the discovery and publication of Mary White's literary journals will feel like the arrival of a packet of long-delayed love letters. For not only do the journals include drafts of so many previously unpublished stories, they also allow us to see something of the woman herself, something never before revealed about her journey from grief and loneliness towards the happiness that so distinguished the later years of her life. Here, for the first time, is a precious insight into the workings of the author's mind and imagination in that period of her life when, after so much success, she fell silent, dealing with the private pain she concealed behind the masks of her characters.