Miss Peabody's Inheritance

Caring for her demanding, bedridden mother and confined to a dreary clerical job, Dorothy Peabody has few pleasures to sustain her until she begins a correspondence with the novelist Diana Hopewell. In this delightful story-within-a-story, the letters between a lonely middle-aged Englishwoman and an Australian writer become a moving novel of love and the need to create. As the correspondence progresses, Miss Peabody becomes completely absorbed in the fictional travels of Hopewell's heroine, the headmistress Arabella Thorne, and her various students and companions. She discovers that the world of storytelling provides escape, but that the surprises of fiction are nothing compared to what real life has to offer.

Author: Elizabeth Jolley

Publisher: University of Queensland

Released Date: 1998

ISBN: 978702217920