I’ve been dipping in and out of DJ Taylor’s fat new book, The Prose Factory, a pleasingly gossipy history of literary life in England since 1918, and so far as it goes, it’s very enjoyable: the bits about money certainly put the writers-must-be-paid-to-appear-at-festivals debate in some perspective. But still, I have to ask: where are all the women?

Taylor gives Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch quite a lot of attention. Also, for reasons that are perhaps less clear, AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble and Brigid Brophy. Edith Sitwell, Penelope Fitzgerald and Lorna Sage are treated sympathetically, and merit several paragraphs, as do a few others. But it’s the omissions that strike you, the many excellent and important female writers who are referred to only in passing, or not at all. Doris Lessing is mentioned just four times, and Muriel Spark and Angela Carter only twice; ditto Elizabeth Taylor. Among those left out entirely are: Sybille Bedford, Anita Brookner, Barbara Comyns, Olivia Manning, Antonia White and – this last truly amazes me – Stevie Smith.

I’m indignant on behalf of all these writers. But it’s Elizabeth Taylor about whom, in this context, I feel most strongly. In his book, Taylor more than gives Kingsley Amis his due, touching on almost every aspect of his career. Yet nowhere does he mention that the author of Lucky Jim – hardly a man anyone would describe as a feminist – was Taylor’s most vehement supporter, calling her “one of the best English novelists born in this century”. Wrong about all sorts of things, Amis was surely right about this.

If you haven’t already, you must read her. There are 12 novels, their subject (mostly) the pain that hides just below the surface of everyday life. Try one – A View of the Harbour, say, or Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – and you may find, as my husband did, that you’ve no choice but to work your way through them all.

To buy A View of the Harbour and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont for a special price, go to bookshop.theguardian.com