The Importance of Being Eldest_ was written while she was convalescing from her stroke. She had a stroke at the age of 63; a few years later she developed dementia. When she was in her fifties, she started writing a novel called _The Secret Adversary,_ inspired by a mystery novel she had read as a child. The original manuscript was heavily edited and re-edited by Bester and he became dissatisfied with the end result. When he died, he instructed that it should be published with all his annotations included, but since his death, several of these annotators have disputed the veracity of some of the annotations. The book was finally published by Ace Books in 1977; her version was not approved until 1980. She began the novel in 1953, as a response to being the oldest and most junior of seven children, by writing a novel in which her family members have different nationalities, including one who is from the moon. The novel follows the story of her family after the grandmother's death, a journey that took her into Spain. Mostly, she traveled to Europe and developed a penchant for European cities, architecture, cafés, streets, and small, intimate restaurants. Although the novel has a mystery that is solved, as in Agatha Christie novels, the protagonist is a modern Cinderella and her brothers (except for the hero) are not princes. (Although it may seem unlikely, in her lifetime, she was never the "eldest" of her siblings.) The plot of the novel is intricate and there are many twists and turns, but eventually the identity of her great-great-great-uncle is discovered. This man was the architect of the family fortune. After leaving the U.S. _—Lonelyhearts_ was a failure in England, but it took off in France and she began writing French novelettes—she lived in Paris for five years and began to write in French. During the 1950s, she spent time in Paris, living in an apartment that overlooked the Arc de Triomphe. She then went to live in Rome, Italy, and rented a suite of rooms in an apartment in a 19th-century building where she also had a maid who did her hair. As an author, she had a high standing in Rome and developed a large correspondence with readers. Her neighbors included two other novelists, an opera singer, and a painter who also lived on the top floor of the apartment building. Bester and the woman who rented the lower two floors were her friends for many years. She eventually had a stroke and lost the use of her right side. It took several years of therapy to relearn many things and regain her abilities, including a driver's license, which she had not had for decades. She lived in Paris during World War II with her first husband, a Greek archaeologist. Their marriage ended in divorce. She met and married her second husband, a man named Hymen Bull, in Rome in 1951. Their marriage lasted seven years. He was an adventurer and a man of many interests, including flying and writing adventure novels. They lived in Paris, Rome, Bermuda, and Hawaii. They had no children. The novels she wrote after _The Magic of Reality_ are not always considered by critics to be as strong as the first novel. The next six novels were written when she was in her eighties: _The Age of the Pussyfoot_ (1975), _The Children's Hour_ (1976), _The Adoration of Jenna Fox_ (1976), _The Compleat Algolian_ (1978), _Jad-Es-Rakim_ (1978), and _No Good from a Corpse_ (1979). Each of her novels in her later years had a central female character, and her novels all contain strong mysteries, but the characters vary in complexity. She was most successful with strong female characters. She continued to write short stories and one more novel, _The Alaskan Story: Or, The Exquisite Corpse,_ in 1980. _The Secret Adversary_ is as much a mystery as a romance, and the character of Mrs. Imber, a formidable spinster, the matriarch of the family, dominates the book. The _Alaskan Story_ may also be considered a mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie. It is not a mystery, however, in the typical sense. It is a science fiction story. Her last novel has a strong supernatural theme, but is not supernatural in the manner that some supernatural novels are. There are also elements of comedy and adventure in the story, as there are in her earlier novels, but the overall feeling is that this is an adventure novel. Her short stories have continued to appear in anthologies and collections. She continued to travel and she gave public readings. The _Alaskan Story_ is an autobiographical book in which she also wrote about the importance of the written word. She and the second husband divorced in 1984. Her last novel was _The Adoration of Jenna Fox,_ published in 1978. The last short story collection, _The Best of Judith Merril,_ was published posthumously. She died in 1994. ### SELECTIONS FROM THE MASTERWORKS OF JUDITH MERRILL #### THE MAGIC OF REALITY 1. We're all the same here. There are no borders, no divisions. That is why I am always being sent back, to make the trip again, to become, for a moment, the other. 2. I was sitting on a garden bench, feeling sorry for myself, waiting for the taxi to come and take me back to the hotel. As usual, my attention drifted to the flowers in the garden, especially the roses. I think a man must be made of stone not to be seduced by roses. 3. "There's a strange woman in the café. I've just seen her." My husband was a scientist, a physicist. He had worked in England in the early days of atomic research. There had been a few experimental bombs. I don't know how many atomic bombs have been exploded—I think there must be dozens. 4. I was standing in a train, gazing out the window, looking for a certain church. I was remembering the church as it had been when I was a child. 5. We walked out of the house together and got into the car—I, my husband, and a man I didn't know. I'm sure it must have been a man; if it had been a woman, the car would have had a different sort of sound to it. 6. "I have a gift for you," the old man was saying. I thought his eyes were blue—it was difficult to see them, because he was a short man, with white hair. But he must have been an old man; he must have been at least thirty. 7. "Is this heaven?" I asked. "No, this is just England," the soldier answered. I had seen the soldiers, of course. There were a lot of them around that year. 8. This was one of the first trains that ever took me to a hospital—a large hospital for women in London. I suppose it must have been a hospital for women in those days—it wasn't just a hospital. 9. It was my third day in bed, and I was looking out the window at the lawn. We were in a private ward; most of the windows were in the next room, but I had asked them to open a window because I needed air. I had never felt so sick in my life. 10. I got dressed. He was waiting for me in the living room; it was a good thing that he couldn't see me. He was watching the news, and I got ready to go out. He always watched the news, so it was no use trying to talk to him while it was on. 11. He had a thin face, no features, no expression. I found myself looking at his hands: big hands, powerful hands. The nails were yellow and they were covered with black dirt. His nails were quite strong. He pulled out a knife from his pocket and started to sharpen it on the table. 12. I could still remember that evening on the lawn, when he had kissed me for the first time. "I hope I haven't been an annoyance," he said. "I should have waited until you were out of the house." He had an unpleasant way of smiling at me that made me feel that I was not attractive, but he seemed to enjoy seeing me annoyed. "Then again, perhaps you can do me a favor." He reached out and touched my breasts, but only a little. 13. "You must leave the city," he said to me when I told him I was pregnant. I could see that it was hard for him to hear it; he just stared ahead, looking out of the window, as if he were looking at something I couldn't see. It seemed to be raining, and the window was half-open. 14. I came out of the clinic on a stretcher, covered with bandages. The train was waiting for me on the siding. I was carried to a small compartment where I lay down. The train pulled away from the platform; it was dark, and everything was wet and cold. The train kept slowing down, but it wasn't a stop; it