"An extremely original novel, a work of conscious art." Forrest Reid, The Guardian

One of the most audacious of all modernist novels. Millicent, Lady Cheseborough -- fifty, widowed, rejected by her much younger lover -- lies dying in a nursing home, the victim of a stroke. As she nears death, her thoughts go back through her life in a desperate attempt to find its meaning.

With great stylistic daring, Gertrude Trevelyan recreates the stream of consciousness in its most realistic and moving form. As It Was in the Beginning is perhaps Trevelyan's most important work, a novel that belongs with To the Lighthouse or As I Lay Dying.