Something to Hide: The Life of Sheila Wingfield, Viscountess Powerscourt

by Penny Perrick

Drawing from Wingfield's letters, diaries, papers, and memoirs and with the cooperation of two of Wingfield's children and her financial and literary advisers, Perrick examines Wingfield's relationships with her father, who oppsed her desire to be a poet, and her husband, a member of the Irish aristocracy. She also examines Wingfield's continual and vehement denial of her Jewish ancestry as well as her struggle with overwhelming physical pain and substance abuse. Perrick's informal style hinders neither her careful analysis of selected poems nor her useful insight into what drove Wingfield to live her life as she did. She concludes that Wingfield was 'an extraordinary woman and a poet in urgent need of redicovery.' This work, recommended for academic and public libraries, should help accomplish just that.--Library Journal

238 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2007