Hot-House

by G.E. Trevelyan

1920s naive and impressionable Mina Cook goes up to Queen Anne’s College, and in the course of three years of relationships, gossip and stifling college life, arrives at a dark decision. A new edition of G.E. Trevelyan’s semi-autobiographical 1933 novel – the most popular in her lifetime.

Genres: Fiction

374 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan was an English novelist. She was born on 17 October 1903 in Bath, Somerset, England. She attended Princess Helena College, then located in Ealing, and was confirmed at St Peter's Church, Ealing in 1920. She attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1923 to 1927, graduating with a second-class degree.

While at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, she won - as the first female winner - the Newdigate Prize for Poetry with her 250-line poem in blank verse titled, Julia, Daughter of Claudius. After leaving Oxford, she moved to London, where she first lived in a women's residence hotel in Bermondsey. She later lived as a lodger in several locations in Kensington.

Trevelyan wrote eight groundbreaking novels between 1932 and 1941, but her writing career was tragically cut short when her flat was hit by a German bomb during the Blitz. She died shortly afterward because of her injuries.

Trevelyan was largely forgotten after her death and for many years her work was out of print. However, in 2020, her debut novel Appius and Virginia was republished by Eye & Lightning Books, seeking to restore the Trevelyan to her rightful place in British literature.