‘You’re really imprisoned, then,’ said Carruthers, staring at her. ‘Imprisoned in your beauty.’
A Pygmalion-style story told with Elizabeth von Arnim’s characteristic observational humour, this novel introduces us to Salvatia (known as Sally), whose beauty causes a stir whenever she appears in public. Having been kept out of sight for most of her young life, Sally is meek and acquiescent. When her marriage elevates her social status, she finds herself first adored and then manipulated by the people she encounters who find her beauty too complicated, her manners too rough. But as Sally moves through society she begins to find her voice.

Elizabeth von Arnim (1866–1941) published her first, heavily autobiographical novel Elizabeth and Her German Garden in 1898. Introduction to Sally was first published in 1926, a few years before The Enchanted April, the novel for which she is perhaps best remembered today. Von Arnim’s 1931 novel Father was re-issued in the Women Writers series in 2020.