Caroline Blackwood (1931-1996) was born into a rich Anglo-Irish aristocratic family. She rebelled against her background at an early age and led a hectic and bohemian life, which included marriages to the painter Lucian Freud, the pianist and composer Israel Citkowitz, and the poet Robert Lowell. In the 1970s Blackwood began to write. Among her books are several novels, including Great Granny Webster and Corrigan (both available asNYRB Classics); On the Perimeter, an account of the women's anti-nuclear protest at Greenham Common; and The Last of the Duchess, about the old age of the Duchess of Windsor.

Andrew Solomon is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Artforum, and The New York Times Magazine, and the author ofThe Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost; the novelA Stone Boat; and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, for which he received the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. He lives in New York City and London.