A Secret Sisterhood looks at the friendships between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor who shaped the work of Charlotte Bronte; the seemingly aloof George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who in fact enjoyed a complex friendship fired by an underlying erotic charge through letters and diaries which have never been published before, the book will resurrect these hitherto forgotten stories of female friendships that were sometimes illicit, scandalous and volatile; sometimes supportive, radical or inspiring; but always, until now, tantalisingly consigned to the shadows.

A fascinating, inspirational look at the relationships between some of our best-loved female authors and their little-known literary collaborators and friends.