THE HEART TO ARTEMIS (316 pp.) —Bryher—Harcourt, Brace & World ($5.75).
The doughty little Englishwoman known as Bryher—in 1920 she changed her name from Winifred Ellerman—lives in Switzerland, where she has written a series of brisk, gnomic historical novels (Roman Wall, Ruari). Bryher seems to have had a full life of missed opportunities. She is the daughter and sister of millionaires.
Her father, Sir John Reeves Ellerman, rose from stock clerk to owner of a vast shipping fortune. By shrewd investment, her brother John—a skittery recluse whose sole passion is the study of rodent...