The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place

by Sally Bayley

From the critically acclaimed author Sally Bayley, The Green Lady is a poignant, brilliant exploration of the relationships between children and their teachers.

In the style of her memoir Girl with Dove, this book explores a child’s search for artistic education and a sense of self. Lyrical and playful, Sally Bayley’s writing transports the reader into an eccentric world of teachers, guardians and guiding spirits of place.

Moved by her female teachers, and guided by the artist J.M.W. Turner, Bayley’s protagonist goes in search of her maternal ancestors, in particular her grandmother, Edna May Turner. Following the narratives of other women in history who have taken different routes to independence and artistic freedom – including the educational suffragist Mary Neal, actress Margaret Rutherford, and poet Stevie Smith – Bayley considers the paths to happiness and the limitations social convention imposes.

Part novel, part memoir, The Green Lady continues the traditions of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as an imagined biography which urgently understands the need for a space of one’s own in which to thrive. As one of the book’s several foster children, Bayley reminds us that families and homes can be found and built within literature and the arts as well as nature's green spaces.

193 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 20, 2023

About the author

Dr Sally Bayley is a tutor in English at Balliol and St. Hugh’s Colleges, Oxford and a member of the Oxford University English Faculty. She is the author of Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual (Oxford University Press, 2007). Eye Rhymes was the first study of Plath’s art work in relation to her body of poetry and prose and was featured in the Sunday Times magazine, on Radio 4 and at the Royal Festival Hall alongside a series of uniquely commissioned pieces of theatre, dance, art and animation, several of which won awards.

In 2007 alongside the publication of Eye Rhymes Sally Bayley commissioned a play exploring the representation of Sylvia Plath's biography. The award winning play, I Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath, a one woman show written and performed by Elisabeth Gray, will run Off Broadway for the month of October 2010. The play will feature alongside a symposium at New York University and will include the director and producer of the forthcoming film adaptation of Plath's novel The Bell Jar: Tristine Skyer and Julia Stiles.

Source: http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/about-fac...

Reviews

[Amy Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

"People wander. They travel from room to room, from place to place, and you cannot follow. No matter how many maps you consult, how many lines you draw up and say, 'there, there they were', you cannot know."

Not entirely sure that I fully understood what I've just read, but the writing was so pretty and I was so pulled in by it that I felt like I had such a strong image of the story in my head.

[Ro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non ho molte parole, questo libro mi ha emozionata e accolta in un mondo dove reale e immaginario si mescolano, dove la poesia è parte della vita. È un libro che celebra il ruolo di quelle persone che abbiamo incontrato fisicamente o spiritualmente e ci hanno segnato e ispirato. Ho avuto l'onore di incontrare l'autrice a una presentazione ed è stato un incontro straordinario, come la sua opera. L'arte in lei è evidente e allo stesso tempo ha un'apertura al prossimo rara.

[Rosetta Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful telling of this lovely memoir. My favourite so far. Beautiful description of memories filled with love.
I too recall the storm of 16 October 1987 as I sat in a hospital ward with a false labour watching the news unfold of all the damage done by the unforeseen storm. Next day I had my beautiful baby and 30 years on another storm delayed her wedding day so that it happened on her birthday.