Cline was born in London, the daughter of A. T. Cline. She graduated from Durham University with an arts degree and earned a master's degree in literature from Lancaster University. Her master's thesis was titled "Lesbian Feminist Versions: Construction of a New Reality" (1982).
"The Case of Beatrice: An Analysis of the Word Lesbian and the Power of Language to Control Women" (1984)
Reflecting Men at Twice Their Natural Size (1987, with Dale Spender)
Just Desserts: Women and Food (1990)
Women, Celibacy and Passion (1993)
Lifting The Taboo: Women Death and Dying (1995)
Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Named John (1998)
Couples: Scene from the Inside (1998)
Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (2002)
The Arvon Book of Life Writing (2010, co-editor, with Carole Angier)
The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction (2012, co-editor, with Midge Gillies)
Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery (2014)
Literary Non-Fiction: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (2015, with Midge Gillies)
After Agatha: Women Write Crime (2022)
Personal life
In 1960, Cline married Neville Samuel Gaffin. Cline married her second husband, American musician Larry Adler, in 1969. They had a daughter and they divorced in 1977. "At different times in her life she has been heterosexual, lesbian, married, separated, divorced," noted a 1993 profile of Cline. She died in 2022, at the age of 84.
↑Cline, Sally. "The Case of Beatrice: an Analysis of the Word “Lesbian” and the Power of Language to Control Women." Feminist Experience in Feminist Research. Manchester: Department of Sociology, University of Manchester (1984).