A Game of Hide and Seek is a 1951 novel by Elizabeth Taylor. A Game of Hide and Seek was published again in 1986 by Virago Press and Penguin Books, with an introduction by Elizabeth Jane Howard. In 2012 NYRB Classics issued a reprint of the novel with an introduction by Caleb Crain. The novel is set in England, with a time-frame divided between the inter-war years and the peace after 1945, and is focused on the characters of Harriet Claridge and Vesey Macmillan, childhood acquaintances whose missed connection haunts them over decades. The novel explores their relationship, its effect on those around them, as they seek each other's love for more than 25 years. Plot Harriet Claridge and Vesey Macmillan are loose acquaintances of the same age who meet as Harriet's mother, Lilian, and Vesey's aunt, Caroline, are close friends who met as young suffragettes. The summer they are 18 Vesey is sent to spend time in the countryside with his aunt before he is sent to Oxford. Harriet is frequently with Caroline as she tutors Vesey's young cousins. Harriet develops a crush on Vesey who only casually returns her feelings. Vesey assumes he will naturally become great and dreams of becoming a writer. Harriet, who is considered by her family to be unexceptional, has no dreams aside from being with Vesey. Sensing how deep the attachment is on Harriet's side, Vesey's aunt writes to her sister to request Vesey return home early. With Vesey gone and the summer over, Harriet manages to get a job working as an assistant in a clothing shop and begins to date Charles Jephcott, her much older next door neighbour who had previously been jilted at the altar and is reluctant to recommit to another woman. Over Christmas Vesey returns for a quick visit. Harriet's feelings for him are renewed enough that she rejects Charles when he proposes to her. Her mother dies shortly after, leaving her an orphan, and in the meantime Charles continues to care for her. Nearly 20 years later Vesey and Harriet meet again when Vesey happens to be in town performing in Hamlet. Vesey is now a mediocre actor in an unremarkable theatre troupe while Harriet is a middle-class housewife, married to Charles, and mother to a teenage girl named Betsy. Harriet still has feelings for Vesey and he feels a renewed and stronger attraction to her. Vesey