Barbara Pym

Susie Boyt

The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent towards everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James.

Leonora’s possession of James is challenged, however, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym’s sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart.

The Sweet Dove Died

Quartet in Autumn

A story about the sometimes troubled truths of relationships.

Bundel verhalen en kortere romans waarin onderhuidse spanningen in menselijke relaties centraal staan.

Civil to Strangers and Other Writings

"One of my favorites of Pym's novels, it turns a shrewd, mocking, but always affectionate eye on English country life 30 years ago. Pym's fans will feel completely at home when they step into the Jane Austen-like lives of Harriet and Belinda Bede."- Christian Science Monitor

Some Tame Gazelle

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 o

Less Than Angels

'.an incisive and wry portrait of life in an Engish village in Oxfordshire.'

A Few Green Leaves

An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters

A Very Private Eye

Despite her husband's aging, Wilmet Forsyth would like to believe she has changed very little. She cultivates a friendship with three unmarried priests and Piers Longridges, a man of an unfathomably different character altogether.

A Glass of Blessings

An Unsuitable Attachment

'A wonderfully accomplished farce beginning with the . . .unsuitabe romantic entanglements of a curate and a pretty young girl, both of whom live in the same rooming house, and a starry-eyed university professor and his female student.'

Crampton Hodnet

An Academic Question

Angela* Pleasence

An Academic Question, by Barbara Pym (4 Cassettes).

A delightful comedy of manners with a touch of mystery, An Academic Question is prime Barbara Pym territory. In a provincial university town Caro Grimstone, a dissatisfied faculty wife, becomes the unwilling accomplice to her husband Alan's ambitions. When she volunteers as a reader to a blind, esteemed anthropologist, Alan seizes the opportunity to steal his papers research that could both advance his reputation while refuting the findings of a respected colleague.

A Glass of Blessings, Jane and Prudencea and Less Than Angels

Glass of Blessings

A Novel

‘Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure’ - Jilly Cooper, author of The Rutshire Chronicles series ‘I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ - Richard Osman, author of The Thrusday Murder Club Barbara Pym was an incomparable chronicler of ordinary, quiet lives. With warmth, humour, precision and great vividness, she gave her best characters an independent life we recognize as totally familiar. In A Few Green Leaves, her last novel, her heroine is Emma Howick, anthropologist. Through her eyes Barbara Pym examines in her own ironic and individual style the quiet revolution in English village life, combining the rural settings of her earliest novels with the themes and characters of her later works. The result is a compelling portrait of a town that seems to be forgotten by time, but which is unmistakably affected by it. Romance shares the pages with death in this engaging novel that is the culmination of Barbara Pym’s acclaimed writing career. 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' - Philip Larkin, author of A Girl in Winter 'Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life' - Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist 'A modern Jane Austen' - Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series

Roman der er stykket sammen af to efterladte manuskripter og udgivet posthumt af Hazel Holt i 1986

Barbara Pym

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