Vein of Iron

The Sheltered Life is perhaps Glasgow’s most direct attack upon that Southern cult of manners. Set in the early 20th century – beginning in 1906 and continuing to the onset of the First World War in 1914 – this novel takes as its subject the changing fortunes of two families the Archbalds and the Birdsongs who live in a rapidly industrializing area on a once-select street of Queenborough Virginia (Glasgow’s fictionalized Richmond).