Lady of Letters explores many of the themes familiar from Josephine Elder’s popular girls’ books; friendship, love of learning, being true to oneself.
    Hilary Moore, educated at home by her gentle schoolmaster father, has a more troubled relationship with her temperamental mother.  She moves from anxious child to respected history mistress at a girls’ high school, to university lecturer and writer.  Thoroughly at home in her academic life, it is in her friendship with an older science teacher and her romance with a young doctor that tension arise and her ideals are tested.  
    Miss Elder’s intriguing disclaimer, “The characters in this book are might-have-beens, not portraits” invites speculation on how much of this story is based on her own life.