Edith Templeton Books In Order

Novels

  1. Summer in the Country (1950)
  2. Living on Yesterday (1951)
  3. The Island of Desire (1952)
  4. Gordon (1966)
  5. Murder in Estoril (1992)

Collections

  1. The Darts of Cupid (2002)

Non fiction

  1. The surprise of Cremona (1954)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Edith Templeton Books Overview

Gordon

Originally written under a pseudonym, this thrilling novel of passion in post World War II London was banned upon its publication in the late 1960s, and is only now being republished under the author’s real name. Edith Templeton creates an indelible character in the smartly dressed Louisa, a savvy young woman in the midst of a divorce who meets a charismatic man in a pub and within an hour has been sexually conquered by him on a garden bench. Thus begins her baffling but magnetic love affair with, and virtual enslavement to, Richard Gordon. Gordon, a psychiatrist, keeps Louisa in his thrall with his almost omniscient ability to see through her and she, in turn, is gripped by the deep, unexpected pleasure of complete submission. As they venture further and further into the depths both psychological and sexual she begins, for the first time, to understand her troubled history and the self that has emerged from it. In her clean, precise style, with every social nuance and motive exquisitely observed, Templeton delivers a tightly wound drama, unsparingly forthright in its description of how this form of love can bring incomparable rapture. Louisa s unsettling story has more than the ring of truth to it: it is told with urgency and relish, and its outcome, which leaves Louisa enlightened and changed forever, is profoundly satisfying.

The Darts of Cupid

In The Darts of Cupid, Edith Templeton, now eighty five, gives us a sweeping and intimate expos of her century, and of the lives of women caught in the historic and personal contingencies it engendered. The unforgettable title story was celebrated upon its original publication in The New Yorker for its explicit portrayal of the relationship between a young British woman and her American superior in a provincial war office during World War II a love affair that lasted only two nights but changed the narrator’s life forever, and is still haunting today, more than thirty years after the story was written. Other pieces take us from the tumbledown glamour of a Bohemian castle between the first and second world wars to an apartment on the coast of Italy in the 1990s, where a rich widow s decision to sell her husband s prized silver becomes a bewitching tale of menopausal longing. In classic prose, Templeton delivers a lost world in all its heartbreaking detail a continental way of life that matters more to us now that it has been all but erased by the turn of a troubled new century. Finally, this book is the record of a unique sensibility: whatever the period, Templeton addresses the truth about female passion with a forthright gaze that is entirely up to date.

The surprise of Cremona

Edith Templeton bohemian aristocrat, accomplished novelist, and widow of the physician to the King of Nepal wrote this highly individual account of her visit to six northern Italian towns in the early 50s. Enchantingly evocative of the time and places, her vintage narrative is a gem of travel literature. In her new introduction, Anita Brookner offers an insightful, gracefully written analysis of the astringent wit and classic poise of Templeton’s writing.

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