It's a time of passion and confusion. Virtue is barely holding down its petticoats. People are bursting their corsets with unbridled desire. It's 1885 - the typewriter and the Suffragettes are sending things topsy-turvy. In the midst of it all, five ambitious New Women and one Newish Man struggle to find their way. Miss Mary Barfoot runs a school for secretaries with her young lover, Miss Rhoda Nunn. But when the Misses Madden - spinsters Virginia and Alice and beautiful young Monica - arrive, along with the charismatic Everard Barfoot, suddenly all the characters are erupting with discoveries, contradictions, epiphanies. -- Back cover.