This is a book about reading, drawing, and getting better—and what they have to do with one another.

Specifically, it is about how these activities were put into relation by the British essayist, artist, and psychoanalyst, Marion Milner (1900-1996). The guiding question of Milner's life was of how people come to feel alive in, and feel creatively responsive to, their own lives. In pursuit of this, Milner explored fields as diverse as anthropology, folklore, education, literature, art, philosophy, mysticism, and psychology. She became one of the twentieth centurys most extraordinary thinkers about creativity.

David Russell shows that there is no writer quite like Milner and the rewards of reading her are immense. Key to all her writing is her search for creative practices of attention—of how we pay attention in the life we have. She helped to develop a kind of psychoanalysis in Britain that focussed on the ways people relate to their own lives and the lives of others.