ABSTRACT
Rosamond Lehmann, in the persona of Olivia, warns in the novel of feeling 'fatally cosy' in a 'feminine conspiracy'. Although several of Lehmann's novels were out of print during the 1960s and 1970s, there is evidence of a fragmentary female network keeping them from oblivion. The majority of the reviewers of the Virago reprint of The Weather in the Streets, were women who felt compelled to begin their critiques with similar personal testimony of their long-standing affection for Lehmann's writing. Peter Widdowson includes 'adaptation into other media' among the loci in which 'ascription of value goes on' with regard to any work of literature; in the case of The Weather in the Streets, neither of its two television versions would seem to have enhanced the novel's literary status. The first novel transmitted on 20 August 1962, condensed the lengthy novel into a running time of fifty minutes; second novel, transmitted on 12 February 1984, ran for just over two hours.
