Rebecca Birrell is an art historian and curator. She is a Bye-Fellow at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. Her first book, This Dark Country: Women Artists, Still Life and Intimacy in the Early Twentieth Century, was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and awarded an Antonia Fraser Grant for a Biography in Progress by the Society of Authors. It was chosen as a Guardian/Observer Art Book of the Year. Venus, Vanishing is her first novel.