The Masks of Mary Renault by Caroline Zilboorg

Born Eileen Mary Challans in London in 1905, Mary Renault wrote six contemporary novels before turning to the historical fiction of ancient Greece for which she is best known. Caroline Zilboorg explores Renault's identity as a gifted writer and a woman who loved women in a society where neither was easy. While training as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, Renault met Julie Mullard, who became her lifelong companion; the relationship shaped how she wrote about intensely personal and socially challenging subjects. In 1948 the two women left England for South Africa and never returned. There Renault turned to Hellenic settings that let her write about war, women's roles, and female and male homosexuality and bisexuality at a remove.