Barbara Pym

Caroline Grimstone, the bored young wife of an ambitious anthropologist, finds a cure for her tedium in reading to the elderly and becoming a party to her husband's purloining of an important manuscript

This wry comedy of manners—Barbara Pym's seventh novel and the last one she wrote before a fifteen-year silence when she gave up writing novels altogether, a hiatus broken only in 1977—is set in the Parish of St. Basil's Church in a slightly unfashionable quarter in London. The vicar, Mark Ainger, his wife Sophia, her sister Penelope, a new arrival to the parish named Rupert Stonebird, and a gentlewoman named Ianthe Broome fret over improbable attachments and embark on a holiday to Rome that will prove decisive to them all

Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour, Pym conducts us through their small lives and the facade they erect to defend themselves against the outside world. There is nevertheless an obstinate optimism in her characters, allowing them in their different ways to win through to a kind of hope. Barbara Pym's sensitive wit and artistry are at their most sparkling in "Quartet in Autumn". "An exquisite, even magnificent work of art" - Observer "'Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour" - The Times "The wit and style of a twentieth century Jane Austen" - Harpers & Queen "Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years ...spectacular" - Sunday Times "Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity" - Financial Times.

Dulcie Mainwaring, the heroine of the book, is one of those excellent women who is always helping others and never looking out for herself- especially in the realms of love. The novel has a delicate tangle of schemes and unfulfilled dreams, hidden secrets and a castle or two.

The lightly satiric focus is on loneliness bravely borne, the bearing-up being done by that excellent woman Mildred Lathbury, a 30-something spinster in the lingering post-WWII rationing of the early 1950s. Living in suburban London and on the fringes of academia, she becomes embroiled with the vicar, the neighbors, the neighbors' lodgers, and a few hopeless (and one rather intriguing) gentleman friends. Dryly, wryly funny, with a riveting sense of place, time, and character. (Part of the synopsis comes from the online Kirkus Review.)

xvii,492p.,p. of plates : 18cm

Harriet and Belinda Bede are middle-aged sisters who have only two things in common: their spinsterhood and their love for each other. Harriet is a bubbly, chubby coquette. Belinda is a meek, thin romantic who, since her youth, has nurtured an unrequited love for the town's vicar. Barbara Pym provides her heroines with a memorable clique of admirers: Archdeacon Hoccleve, a pompous man of the cloth whose sermons remain mysteries to his parishioners; Edgar Donne the young church curate who, taken under Harriet's wing, is fed enough chicken to last a lifetime; and Count Ricardo Bianco, a nice old man who periodically proposes to, and is turned down by, Harriet. In many ways, Some Tame Gazelle, Barbara Pym's first novel, presents the reverse image of village life portrayed in A Few Green Leaves, her last novel. Where that was reflective, this is hopeful, gay, and turned to the future. The world of Barbara Pym may be as provincial as an English country village, but it is alive and ready for the seizing.

From Amazon.com: Barbara Pym's last novel, and a witty portrayal of hidden emotions and passions. Leonora Eyre is an elegant woman of indeterminate age, with a fondness for Victoriana and attractive young men. Humphrey, an antique dealer, and his handsome nephew would seem to be suitable new acquaintances.

It is surely appropriate that anthropologists, who spend their time studying life and behavior in various societies, should be studied in their turn," says Barbara Pym. In a wonderful twist on her subjects, she has written a book inspecting the behavior of a group of anthropologists. She pits them against each other in affairs of the heart and mind. Academia is an especially rich backdrop. There is competition between the sexes, gender, and age groups. With Pym's keen eye for male pretensions and female susceptibilities, she exploits with good humor. Love will have its way even among the learned, one of whom is in a quandary between an adult and a young student. This is the world of research, grants, libraries and primitive cultures. Here is a particularly interesting contrast between the tribes of Africa and the social matrix of London. As the title implies, civilized society fares not too well on moral grounds to the more primitive societies.

Here is vintage Pym--a warm, witty slice of uniquely rural English life, meticulously written and spiced with Pym's keen social observations and her band of hilarious, eccentric characters.

If Prudence Bates and Jane Cleveland seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at a reunion of old students in Oxford, neither of them is aware of it. Born a decade apart, their pupil and tutor relationship has circumscribed their lives and cemented their friendship.

From Amazon.com: Barbara Pym’s early novel takes us into 1950s England, as seen through the funny, engaging, yearning eyes of a restless housewife Wilmet Forsyth is bored. Bored with the everyday routine of her life. Bored with teatimes filled with local gossip. Bored with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But on her thirty-third birthday, Wilmet’s conventional life takes a turn when she runs into the handsome brother of her close friend. Attractive and enigmatic, Piers Longridge is a mystery Wilmet is determined to solve. Rather than settling down, he lived in Portugal, then returned to England for a series of odd jobs. Driven by a fantasy of romance, the sheltered, naïve Englishwoman sets out to seduce Piers—only to discover that he isn’t the man she thinks he is. As cozy as sharing a cup of tea with an old friend, A Glass of Blessings explores timeless themes of sex, marriage, religion, and friendship while exposing our flaws and foibles with wit, compassion, and a generous helping of love.

Crampton Hodnet is a consummate farce—constructed, in recognizably "Pym" fashion, around a pair of unsuitable attachments. The first involves a young curate and Miss Morrow, who are both residents at Miss Doggett's home, Leamington Lodge. Their attempt to provide a plausibly innocent account of a late afternoon excursion into the woods outside Oxford gives rise to the fanciful creation of a nonexistent vicar and village—the Crampton Hodnet of the title. The second romance is that between a starry-eyed professor and his female student, who is continually falling into traps of her own devising.

Completed barely two months before her death, Pym's last novel is an incisive and wry portrait of life in an English village in Oxfordshire. It is also certain to be considered by many her masterwork. In A Few Green Leaves the author combines the rural setting of her earliest novels with many of the themes--and even some characters--of her later ones. Switching points of view among many characters, she builds with accumulating effect the picture of life in a town forgotten by time yet affected dramatically by it. Historical time--represented by Druid ruins, the local eighteenth-century country manor, and the last aristocrats who occupied it in the 1920's--is juxtaposed against the banalities of life in today's world.