ABSTRACT
Marion Milner herself described that first book as the record of "a seven years' study of living to find out what kinds of experience made me happy". It is typical of Marion that she turns most often to a very unexpected source—to the daylight world of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, using his efforts to survive to map her own very different quest. And Marion's witty and thoughtful use of Defoe hints at some of her most engaging qualities, ones that she retained until the day she died—her capacity for childlike clarity and directness. Marion seems to have discovered almost at once that sign of a real writer—a personal and distinctive voice of her own. Her taste seems to have ranged from classics like Robinson Crusoe to contemporary novelists like Aldous Huxley, from Shakespeare to Blake to T. S. Eliot. Marion seems to have discovered almost at once that sign of a real writer—a personal and distinctive voice of her own.
