As another term begins at her girls' school, Josephine Napier reasserts her iron grip over her teachers and family. Her air of studied self-sacrifice conceals ruthless manipulation, but with the introduction of a male teacher to her staff and the return of an old rival for her husband's affections, the mask begins to slip. Old deceptions and new rivalries come to the surface, and the starched perfection of her life is threatened. A consummate expression of Ivy Compton-Burnett's unique style, full of viciously witty dialogue laced with double meanings and veiled insults, More Women Than Men is a masterful dissection of gender and power by an essential twentieth-century writer.

It is Christmas Day, 1885, and the Edgeworths are at each other's throats again. Duncan holds his wife and children captive to his authoritarian whims; every day brings fresh struggles for power. Before breakfast is over, there will be presents in the fire. When illness strikes the family, volatile tensions are unleashed that result in scandal, adultery and murder, while a crowd of gossiping neighbours watches gleefully on. A brutally funny demolition of patriarchal authority, A House and Its Head confirms Ivy Compton-Burnett's status as one of the unique stylists of twentieth-century English fiction, and its greatest chronicler of the violent dysfunction of families.

""The sight of duty does make one shiver," said Miss Herrick. "The actual doing of it would kill one, I think."" Ever anxious to keep up appearances, self-avowed intellectual and scholar Nicholas Herrick knows that to involve himself in the running of his own school would be a condescension too far. Assembling around himself a cast of fittingly fawning friends and aides, he sets about unveiling his final masterpiece. Described in contemporary reviews as "a work of genius," "Pastors and Masters "inaugurated the writing career of an author gifted with a rare skill for characterization and for wry portrayals of domestic scenes.