The Human Interest

🔖 Isobel Violet Hunt (1862-1942) was a British author of feminist novels and a literary hostess who founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League in 1908 and participated in the founding of International PEN. She was the daughter of an artist and a writer and was brought up in the Pre-Raphaelite group, knowing John Ruskin and William Morris. Her writing included short stories, novels and biography and she was an active feminist, but despite her considerable output she is better known for the literary salons she held at her London home where among her guests were Rebecca West, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, D H Lawrence and many others. Although she never married, her lovers included Somerset Maugham, H G Wells and, most notably, Ford Madox Ford. Both Maugham and Ford based characters on her in their works. This novel which is subtitled A Study in Incompatibilities was first published in 1899.