Rachel Ingalls was born in Boston in 1940. She dropped out of school and spent time in Germany before studying at Radcliffe College, then moved to Britain in 1965. Her debut novel, Theft (1970), won the Authors' Club First Novel Award; and Mrs Caliban (1982) was named - to her surprise - one of the 20 best American novels since WWII by the British Book Marketing Council (alongside Toni Morrison, Philip Roth and John Updike). Over half a century, Ingalls wrote 11 story collections and novellas to great acclaim.
