Instead of a Letter

by Diana Athill

Over the last decade or so, Diana Athill has written a series of well-reviewed accounts of her life as an editor and writer in London.  It's hard to see how any inveterate reader wouldn't devour them with joy.  Yet each time a new book was published, I wondered anew why her first—and to my mind, still her best (as much as I've enjoyed the others)—memoir, Instead of a Letter, had never been reprinted.  I loved it when I read it in 1962 and lent copies to all my friends until it ...