The Chinese Garden
The Chinese Garden
Rosemary Manning
A long-lost lesbian classic of adolescent rebellion and sexual awakening.
Afterword by Patricia Juliana Smith
Set in a repressive British girls’ boarding school in the late 1920s—where not only sexuality but femininity is squashed—Rosemary Manning’s 1962 novel is the coming-of-age story of sixteen-year-old Rachel, a sensitive, bright, and innocent student. Rachel finds refuge from the Spartan conditions, strict regime, fierce discipline, and formidable headmistress at Bampfield in a secret garden. She also finds friendship there, with a rebellious girl named Margaret.
As Margaret has her mind expanded by a scandalous tome entitled The Well of Loneliness, she engages in a bold, forbidden act—the ultimate transgression at Bampfield—and Rachel is drawn into the turmoil. Confronted with the persecution of her friend and troubled by a growing awareness of her own sensuality, Rachel faces an impossible choice that drives her to desperate measures.
"Manning has very considerable descriptive powers and can paint the landscape within as suggestively as the one without. . . . This is a very intelligent, sensitive, and compelling book." —Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange
"Manning is a sensitive writer. She has not only a fine ear for prose but a fine eye for character. She has succeeded in creating . . . the world of the adolescent [searching for] an 'inner order behind a chaotic and unlovely existence.'" —New York Times Book Review
"Rosemary Manning's unjustly forgotten novel is a deft depiction of innocence and the forces of hypocrisy, paranoia, and self-hatred that betray innocence. It deserves to rank among the very best of the early- and mid-twentieth-century portrayals of girls' school love such as Olivia and Mädchen in Uniform." —Lillian Faderman, author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers
"Rosemary Manning writes with subtlety, intelligence, control, and great respect for words. . . . The Chinese Garden offers something of the misty, undefined evil that pervades The Turn of the Screw." —The New York Herald Tribune
