Lee Randall

The stark horror of Barbara Comyns’s fiction was all too autobiographical

Comyns’s fans have long enjoyed the novels’ macabre details and black humour. Now Avril Horner reveals their disturbing sources

Barbara Comyns, photographed in her twenties by Madame Yevonde. [From The Personal Collection of Julian Pemberton]
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  • Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence

    Avril Horner

    Manchester University Press, pp. 424, £30

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