When Lorna's father returned to their village in Wales, she had a more normal life, but never felt that she fit in with her family. Her grandmother was useless when it came to cooking and cleaning, and spent most of her time complaining about men, eating sweets, and missing the comforts of her childhood home. Her relatives wondered if Lorna had inherited his 'bad blood' because they had many interests in common. He was very bright and passed on his love of reading to Lorna. Her philandering minister grandfather loved to frequent the pubs. Her grandparents had a terrible marriage and were constantly fighting. While her father was away fighting in World War II, young Lorna and her mother lived with her grandparents in a vicarage in Hanmer, Flintshire. It was a surprise to read about the unusual childhood of Lorna Sage, a well known literary critic. In the Preface she wrote: 'In concentrating on women's writing.you stress the extent and pace of change, for the scale of women's access to literary life has reflected and accelerated democratic, diasporic pressures in the modern world'.ģ.5 stars. She edited The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (1999) which has become a standard work. Sage went on to receive an MA from Birmingham University for a thesis on seventeenth century poetry.Īll of her academic career was spent at the University of East Anglia, where she was Professor of English Literature from 1994.

Sage became pregnant when she was 16 but was able to continue her education and won a scholarship to read English at Durham University, only after the university changed its admission rules to allow married couples to study there. Her childhood in the late 1940s and early 1950s is recalled in her last book Bad Blood. Sage was born at Hanmer, Flintshire, Wales, and educated at the village school, then at the Girls' High School in Whitchurch, Shropshire. The eldest child of Valma and Eric Stockton, she was named after Lorna Doone.

Book bad blood