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Juliet Stevenson reads F M Mayor's unfairly Neglected Classic, the story of a plain, reliable parson's daughter whose life of duty and service is thrown into confusion by an unexpected and unsought love affair. Today Mary's quiet life in the rectory is disturbed by a new visitor, Mr Herbert.

The Reader is Juliet Stevenson
Abridger Sally Marmion
Producer Di Speirs

FM Mayor's masterful novel, The Rector's Daughter, is a rare thing - a novel with a deceptively small canvas, set in the backwaters of a dull East Anglia a century ago, but still as fresh as ever. Much loved by those who have discovered it, it now comes to Radio 4 as one of the Open Book listeners' Neglected Classics.

At the heart of the novel lie the fortunes of Mary Jocelyn, a dutiful and devoted daughter content to live out her destiny under the leaden East Anglian skies she loves, to find solace in a robin's song and in the rare moments of warmth from her aged and formidable father. But on losing the one soul who really loved and needed her, Mary finds herself unbearably lonely, and for the first time open to new horizons.

With deft precision, FM Mayor captures the emotions stirring in Mary's heart and the pain of thwarted middle aged desire. With her unerring eye, she reveals both the bitterness and strengths of a happy marriage. The Rector's Daughter is acerbic and poignant and much deserves its loyal fans and its place within Radio 4's Neglected Classics season.

FM Mayor was born in 1872 and read History at Newnham College Cambridge when university education was still a rare adventure for a woman. Her fiance died in India and she remained within her family circle for the rest of life (her father was a clergyman like Mary's). She published four novels and a collection of short stories, of which The Rector's Daughter is the best known; it was much praised on publication by Rebecca West, Rosamund Lehmann, E M Forster and Virginia Woolf. Plagued by ill health, she died in 1932 aged 60.