Where to start with Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was born in Oswestry, Shropshire.
From 1958-1974, she worked as an editorial secretary at the International African Institute. Her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, was published in 1950, and was followed by Excellent Women (1952), Jane and Prudence (1953), Less than Angels (1955), A Glass of Blessings (1958) and No Fond Return of Love (1961).

During the sixties and early seventies her writing suffered a partial eclipse and, discouraged, she concentrated on her work for the Institute, from which she retired in 1974 to live in Oxfordshire. A renaissance in her fortunes came in 1977, when both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil chose her as one of the most underrated novelists of the century. With astonishing speed, she emerged, after sixteen years of obscurity, to almost instant fame and recognition. Quartet in Autumn was published in 1977 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Sweet Dove Died followed in 1978, and A Few Green Leaves was published posthumously. Barbara Pym died in January 1980.

‘I’m a huge fan of Barbara Pym’
RICHARD OSMAN

‘My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy, as though I were meeting an old, dear friend’
JILLY COOPER

‘The subtlest of her books . . .
the sparkle on first acquaintance has been succeeded by the deeper brilliance of established art’
PHILIP LARKIN

BARBARA PYM READING GUIDE

Where to start with Barbara Pym, a guide to the nine Barbara Pym books Virago publish, in order of their original publication:

CIVIL TO STRANGERS

INTRODUCED BY HAZEL HOLT

When Barbara Pym died in 1980, she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, Civil to Strangers, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, ‘Finding a Voice’, Pym’s only written comment on her writing career.

In Civil to Strangers, the lives of a young couple, Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon and her self-absorbed writer husband Adam, are thrown into upheaval when a mysterious Hungarian arrives in their village.

CRAMPTON HODNET

INTRODUCED BY LOUIS DE BERNIERES

Formidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties for young academics and acting as watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. Anthea, her great-niece, is in love with a dashing undergraduate with political ambitions. Of this, Miss Doggett thoroughly approves. However, Anthea’s father, an Oxford don, is carrying on in the most unseemly fashion with a student – they have been spotted together at the British museum! But the only liaison Miss Doggett isn’t aware of is taking place under her very own roof: the lodger has proposed to her paid companion Miss Morrow. She wouldn’t approve of that at all.

SOME TAME GAZELLE

INTRODUCED BY MAVIS CHEEK

Together yet alone, the Misses Bede occupy the central crossroads of parish life. Harriet, plump, elegant and jolly, likes nothing better than to make a fuss of new curates, secure in the knowledge that Count Ricardo Bianco will propose to her yet again this year. Belinda, meanwhile, has harboured sober feelings of devotion towards Archdeacon Hoccleve for thirty years.

Then into their quiet, comfortable lives comes a famous librarian, Nathaniel Mold, and a bishop from Africa, Theodore Grote – who each takes to calling on the sisters for rather more unsettling reasons.

‘Some Tame Gazelle is my personal favourite for its sparkling high comedy and its treasury of characters . . . [Pym] makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies, and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page. Of how many authors can you honestly say that?’
MAVIS CHEEK

EXCELLENT WOMEN

INTRODUCED BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

Mildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, ‘capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life – birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fête spoilt by bad weather’. Her glamorous new neighbours, the Napiers, seem to be facing a marital crisis. One cannot take sides in these matters, though it is tricky, especially as Mildred has a soft spot for dashing young Rockingham Napier. This is Barbara Pym’s world at its funniest and most touching.

JANE AND PRUDENCE

INTRODUCED BY JILLY COOPER

‘I devoured all her books, but Jane and Prudence remains my favourite’ JILLY COOPER

If Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates seem an unlikely pair to be walking together at an Oxford reunion, neither of them is aware of it. They couldn’t be more different: Jane is a rather incompetent vicar’s wife, who always looks as if she is about to feed the chickens, while Prudence, a pristine hothouse flower, has the most unsuitable affairs. With the move to a rural parish, Jane is determined to find her friend the perfect man. She learns, though, that matchmaking has as many pitfalls as housewifery.

‘This comedy of manners is a salutary reminder of just how good Barbara Pym was . . . This book is a gem’ THE TIMES

LESS THAN ANGELS

INTRODUCED BY SALLEY VICKERS

Catherine Oliphant is a writer and lives with handsome anthropologist Tom Mallow. Their relationship runs into trouble when he begins a romance with student Deirdre Swann, so Catherine turns her attention to the reclusive anthropologist Alaric Lydgate, who has a fondness for wearing African masks. Added to this love tangle are the activities of Deirdre’s fellow students and their attempts to win the competition for a research grant. The course of true love or academia never did run smooth.

A GLASS OF BLESSINGS

INTRODUCED BY CLARE CHAMBERS

Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking and fairly young – but very bored. Her husband Rodney, a handsome army major, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less.

Her interest wanders to the nearby Anglo-catholic church, where at last she can neglect her comfortable household in the more serious-minded company of three unmarried priests, and, of course, Piers Longridge, a man of an unfathomably different character altogether.

NO FOND RETURN OF LOVE

INTRODUCED BY PAUL BINDING

Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself – especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn’t prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie’s pretty, young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life’s little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all .

AN ACADEMIC QUESTION

THE BARBARA PYM BUNDLE