This is a priceless addition to the oeuvre of one of Britain's best known anthropologists. Who would have imagined that a lifetime of writing between the lines could be brought together as something so uniquely powerful, wicked and charming as this book. Richard Fardon has found Mary Douglas's words in all kinds of places, in all states of preparedness, enrolling many audiences and sometimes none -- and from the informal to the outrageous, from feelings to convictions, from wit to sarcasm. Running like a commentary alongside her major publications, it is as much an illumination of her world as of herself. Professor Marilyn StrathernUniversity of Cambridge Mary Douglas gives unprecedented insights here into her formation, her reasons, her attachments and convictions; the material ranges widely, from some superb uncollected essays to unusually revealing interviews. The intellectual acerbity for which she was celebrated is undercut by the affections she shows, and her stringent endorsement of orderliness lightened by marvellous wit and empathy. The book is an exhilarating anthology, from a wise woman who has no peer, and whose thinking continues to resonate in the discipline of anthropology and far beyond.Marina WarnerProfessor, Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Supervisors can inspire complex loyalties, but Richard Fardon has honoured Mary Douglas in ways few could expect, writing her Intellectual Biography (1999) and then, as her literary executor, editing two posthumous collections, one of which is A Very Personal Method...This book is an assemblage of articles published in unconventional places, lectures delivered to non-academic audiences, and material not intended for publication. Everything reveals an original thinker in the process of teasing out ideas, often by explaining them in detail to a lay audience...Undoubtedly specialists who have already engaged with her major works will find this selection of writings, untempered by the pressures of peer review, a fascinating insight to her way of thinking. But merely interested people (the original audience) will also find much to enjoy in her elegant writing.

Pamela Shurmer-Smith, University of Portsmouth