The Trap is the eighth “chapter volume” of Dorothy M. Richardson’s pioneering semi-autobiographical series, Pilgrimage .

Series protagonist Miriam Henderson impulsively takes a flat in Flaxman Court with the very prim Selina Holland. Miriam struggles to introduce a disapproving Miss Holland to her bohemian London. Their apartment is across the way from that of a famous poet, E. W. Sayce—and Miss Holland is not impressed. (In later editions, Sayce is instead identified by Richardson as W. B. Yeats .)

As is typical in the Pilgrimage volumes, this is a story in which nothing much “happens”—Richardson herself dismissed the notion of plot as “lollipops for children”—but which paints a vivid and intimate portrait of a young writer’s mind, and brings to life the world that shaped her.