Illustration by Dadu Shin

Discussed in this essay:

Twice Lost, by Phyllis Paul. McNally Editions. 257 pages. $18.

When Phyllis Paul died on August 30, 1973, after a motorcycle hit her as she crossed a road in Hastings, England, the authorities had to identify her from the name tag sewn on her handkerchief. Paul had believed that a writer should be known simply for her work, and she had been forgotten once already, for fifteen years, the period between her second and third novels. She knew what it was to be noticed, dropped, and then remembered;…