Diana Athill helped shape some of the most celebrated books in modern literature. For nearly five decades, she edited (and nursed and coerced and coaxed) writers including Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul and Philip Roth. From the pleasures, intrigues and complexities of a life spent among authors and manuscripts to an account of Diana's own turn to writing, this is the story of an illustrious career.