Francesca Wade

The Woman Alchemist

Remedios Varo, part of the Surrealist exodus to Mexico City during World War II, transmuted her experience of exile into fantasies of cosmic unity.

Court and Spark

Across her stories and novels, Susan Taubes explored the frustration and freedom of estrangement.

Highly Eccentric Characters

“Every biography is a work of artifice—it creates a narrative out of life, which is messy, unpredictable, contradictory, and mostly private.”

‘The Sanctuary of Pure Expression’

A new biography of Mina Loy shows that the roving modernist saw artistic genius as a means to self-reinvention.