Rachel Ingalls

Rachel Ingalls was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards. Ingalls' reputation is characterised by deep admiration and acclaim but also a certain degree of obscurity. She has referred to her limited commercial success as being due to the "very odd, unsalable length" of her books, which tend to be story collections or novellas. She was awarded the Authors' Club First Novel Award for her book Theft. In 1986 the British Book Marketing Council named the hitherto little known Mrs Caliban as one of the 20 greatest American novels since World War II, sparking wider interest in both book and writer. Earlier praise for Mrs Caliban came from John Updike. The writer Daniel Handler is an advocate of Ingalls' work.