Virginia Lloyd's first book, also a memoir, was The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement (UQP 2008). She lives in Sydney and works in publishing.
This journey from self-censoring schoolgirl to something very different feels victorious, and the telling of these neglected and important cultural truths is a brave achievement. --Sydney Morning Herald Exquisite . . . Girls at the Piano is the work of a memoirist who has finely tuned her craft. . . . Lloyd's journey is interwoven with the experiences of girls at the piano through history. . . . This is a beautiful celebration of passionate creativity (whether professional or amateur) and how it can enrich and shape our lives. --Readings This delightful new book is in part a memoir about how learning the piano shaped the lives of two women, worlds and generations apart. The women are the author and her Scottish-born grandmother. The book explores the relationship between those women and the piano, but also that of many piano-playing heroines of countless novels over two centuries. Virginia Lloyd was intrigued initially by Sybella, the pianist heroine of Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career. She references piano-playing heroines created by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Chekhov and Hardy among others. --Spectator