Download or read book The Testing of Barbara Pym written by Emily Stockard and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-23 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Testing of Barbara Pym, a companion volume to The Making of Barbara Pym (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), completes a comprehensive analysis of Pym’s novels and her life, focusing on her complex view of the necessity of change at both the individual and cultural levels. Newly published archival material supports this treatment of Pym’s vision of a changing world – a vision premised upon the principle of continuity, a linking together of past, present, and future. In her novels published from 1955-1980, beginning with Britain’s emergence from post-war austerity, Pym portrays, in an optimistic fashion, several changing aspects of British culture: expansion of the suburbs, acceptance of homosexual men, erosion of the class system, inclusivity in the Anglican Church. But with these changes, new strains emerge as well; the principle of continuity undergoes radical testing and is then emphatically reasserted. Likewise, despite upheavals to established patterns in her life, chiefly the inability to publish her work, Pym persisted in cultivating such elements of continuity as she could, an effort rewarded, while she was in rural retirement, by a return to the publishing world. Thus, in both Pym’s novels and her life, continuity survives the duress of testing circumstances.
Download or read book Quartet in Autumn written by Barbara Pym and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. One did not drink sherry before the evening, just as one did not read a novel in the morning. In 1970s London, Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia work in the same office and suffer the same problem – loneliness. Lovingly and with delightful humour, Barbara Pym conducts us through their day-to-day existence: their preoccupations, their irritations, their judgements, and – perhaps most keenly felt – their worries about having somehow missed out on life as post-war Britain shifted around them. Deliciously, blackly funny and full of obstinate optimism, Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.
Download or read book Excellent Women written by Barbara Pym and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excellent Women is probably the most famous of Barbara Pym's novels. The acclaim a few years ago for this early comic novel, which was hailed by Lord David Cecil as one of 'the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years,' helped launch the rediscovery of the author's entire work. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a spinster in the England of the 1950s, one of those 'excellent women' who tend to get involved in other people's lives - such as those of her new neighbor, Rockingham, and the vicar next door. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest.
Download or read book The Barbara Pym Cookbook written by Hilary Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVBarbara Pym’s sister Hilary teams with cookbook author Honor Wyatt to bring together this mouthwatering collection of family recipes, memories, and anecdotes drawn from Pym’s diaries and letters, as well her most acclaimed novels /divDIV Straight from the kitchen of Barbara Pym, this winning cookbook delivers a delectable treat for readers who like their meals served with a generous helping of literary aplomb. Sharing favorite family recipes that Pym incorporated into her novels, The Barbara Pym Cookbook reveals how the author’s life intersected with those of her memorable characters./divDIV /divDIVInside you’ll find British classics such as steak and kidney pie, plum cake, sausage rolls, and toad-in-the-hole—dishes that Pym’s characters would often prepare for each other. Other treats, such as moussaka and risotto, reflect Pym’s fascination with Greece and Italy. Throughout, the recipes are interwoven with references to Pym’s novels; Dulcie’s musings on “love apples” from No Fond Return of Love accompany directions for tomatoes à la Provençale, for instance. There are glimpses of Pym’s personal life, too, such as her description of kipper pâté for lunch with Philip Larkin. The Barbara Pym Cookbook is a must-have for both budding cooks and Pym aficionados./div
Download or read book Some Tame Gazelle written by Barbara Pym and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-05-19 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTRODUCED BY MAVIS CHEEK 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'She is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life' Anne Tyler 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
Download or read book Miss Pym Disposes written by Josephine Tey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miss Lucy Pym, a popular English psychologist, is guest lecturer at a physical training college. The year's term is nearly over, and Miss Pym -- inquisitive and observant -- detects a furtiveness in the behavior of one student during a final exam. She prevents the girl from cheating by destroying her crib notes. But Miss Pym's cover-up of one crime precipitates another -- a fatal "accident" that only her psychological theories can prove was really murder.
Download or read book The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym written by Paula Byrne and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously’ JILLY COOPER Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021
Download or read book The Dud Avocado written by Elaine Dundy and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2010-11-17 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A smart, funny classic about a young and beautiful American woman who moves to Paris determined to live life to the fullest. The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy’s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living. “I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).” –Groucho Marx "[The Dud Avocado] is one of the best novels about growing up fast..." -The Guardian
Download or read book After Leaving Mr Mackenzie written by Jean Rhys and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julia Martin is in Paris and at the end of her rope. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now after being dropped by her latest lover, she visits London to see her ailing mother and meets up with her distrustful sister, Norah. This is a haunting picture of two desperate women in a desperate predicament.
Download or read book The Barbara Pym Collection Volume Two written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two literary romantic novels from the New York Times–bestselling author of Excellent Women. Less Than Angels: In a story that explores the mating habits of humans, magazine writer Catherine Oliphant lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—until he announces he’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student. Though stunned by the betrayal, Catherine becomes fascinated by another anthropologist: a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. Now Catherine must weigh her options and decide who she is and what she really wants. No Fond Return of Love: The course of true love does not run smoothly in this delightful comedy of manners set in 1960s London. Jilted by her fiancé, Dulcie Mainwaring gives up on ever finding true love. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from meddling in the romantic lives of others. Her friend Viola is enamored with a handsome editor, who in turn has eyes for Dulcie’s young niece. Dulcie, meanwhile, for all her struggles may be falling back into love again.
Download or read book A La Pym written by Hilary Pym and published by Prospect Books (UK). This book was released on 1995 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Barbara Pym Collection Volume One written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three comedies of manners set in postwar England by the New York Times–bestselling author of Excellent Women and “the rarest of treasures” (Anne Tyler). Often characterized as the twentieth-century literary heiress to Jane Austen, and heralded by Phillip Larkin as “the most underrated novelist of the century,” Barbara Pym explored female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—not the least of which, unrequited love—with sharp wit and deep compassion for her characters. No wonder Eudora Welty called her work “sheer delight” and the New York Times raved, “her entire canon is a treat.” A Glass of Blessings: Wilmet Forsyth is bored with her everyday routine: teatimes, local gossip, even with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But Wilmet’s conventional life takes a turn when she runs into the enigmatic brother of a close friend. Piers Longridge is a mystery Wilmet is determined to solve. 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. Some Tame Gazelle: Pym’s debut novel invites readers to “step into the Jane Austen–like lives of Harriet and Belinda Bede,” sisters who live together in a small English village (The Christian Science Monitor). Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with the married archdeacon of their church for thirty years. Meanwhile Belinda’s more confident younger sister, Harriet, is herself pursued by an Italian count whose proposals of marriage are always graciously declined. But it’s a new arrival in their midst who has everyone talking. For now, in this poignant novel of unrequited love, that is enough. Jane and Prudence: Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were friends at Oxford, but now lead very different lives. Jane is married to a vicar in a proper English parish with a daughter she adores. Prudence lives in London, career-minded and fiercely independent—until Jane decides she should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind. What follows is a delightfully trenchant story of manners, morals, family, and female bonding that redefines the social novel for a new generation.
Download or read book The Making of Barbara Pym written by Emily Stockard and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-10 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Making of Barbara Pym offers new insights into Pym’s formative years as a writer, during which she honed a complex view of the necessity of change on individual and cultural levels. Supported by newly published archival material, this comprehensive study of Pym’s early work explores her personal and fictional pre-war and wartime writing, including unpublished and posthumously published works, before looking closely at Some Tame Gazelle and Excellent Women, published during Britain’s post-war austerity period. Of central importance is a new recognition of Pym’s use of social roles, particularly those of women, as proper avenues for change. The book traces how Pym came to devise characters whose individual development can be seen as analogous to or representative of larger cultural movements. Pym uses the spinster figure to embody the forward-looking cultural perspectives that she endorsed and then, finally, in Jane and Prudence, to figure the end of Britain’s austerity period.
Download or read book The Reality behind Barbara Pym s Excellent Women written by Robin R. Joyce and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-20 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses Barbara Pym’s published and unpublished work through a new image, that of the troublesome woman. It details the political nature of her work, highlighting her feminist ideas which are hidden in village-like settings and revealed by troublesome women. By exploring Pym’s written work, published, and unpublished, diaries and notebooks, the book shows that this material gives credence to Hilary Pym’s interpretation of her sister as a complex person.
Download or read book One of Ours written by Willa Cather and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1960 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Barbara Pym and the Novel of Manners written by Annette Weld and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-02-12 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Junes written by Julia Glass and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2002-09-03 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An astonishing novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises. In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage.... Six years later, again in June, Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses.... Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.
