'amongst all else she [Causley's mother] found a little time for reading from a two-penny library: novels by the Cornish writers Silas and Joseph Hocking ("Rosemary Carew", by the latter, was a tremendous favourite) and "Stella Dallas" by the American Olive Higgins Prouty. She also had a few books of her own: "The Following of the Star" by Florence L. Barclay, "The Sorrows of Satan" by Marie Corelli, and the like. I tried them all, and enjoyed most: especially "Stella Dallas", which exercised a peculiar fascination over me. I re-read it constantly and with such devotion that she forbade me ever to read it again. I couldn't think why; and not until years later did it occur to me that the central character was a prostitute'.