When I started work in the late Sixties, literary publishing depended to an extraordinary extent on an army of highly literate women, mostly middle-aged, usually unmarried and always extremely badly paid, who would struggle home every evening and weekend heavily laden with typescripts and proofs to be edited and corrected in their spare time; and on a group of enterprising Jewish émigré publishers who had revitalised the trade immediately after the war. Both groups are integral to Loose Connections, a subtle interlacing of family and professional life. 

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