Antonia White is best known for her masterpiece Frost in May, for having come back from Bedlam and madness, and for the public feud between her daughters over the editing of her diaries. This is the first biography to tell the complete story of a life courageously lived against most difficult odds: 'Oh I DID want to be happy as a woman...But I'm a monster and must accept being one. Not all writers are monsters. But my kind is.' With full access to White's unexpurgated diaries, the analysis journals, the asylum records and her voluminous correspondence, Jane Dunn has explored the woman and the writer, the persecutor and the victim.