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this comprehensive study of Pym’s early work explores her personal and fictional pre-war and wartime writing, including unpublished and posthumously published works, before looking closely at Some Tame Gazelle and Excellent Women, published during Britain’s post-war austerity period.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 Excellent Women written by Barbara Pym and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 256 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 No Fond Return of Love written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three lonely people come together in this poignant, witty novel of star-crossed romance from the New York Times–bestselling author of Jane and Prudence. After being jilted by her fiancé, Dulcie Mainwaring despairs of ever finding true love. For a distraction, she goes to a publishing conference, where she meets Viola Dace, a dramatic woman who refuses to live without romance, as well as Aylwin Forbes, an editor whom Viola adores. The fact that Aylwin is married doesn’t stop Viola. When her amorous pursuit prompts Aylwin’s wife to leave him, the academic heartthrob is wide open to Viola’s romantic attentions. That is, until Dulcie’s eighteen-year-old niece moves in with Viola, and the young girl soon catches Aylwin’s roving eye. Set in London in the early 1960s, No Fond Return of Love is a delightful comedy of manners that comes full circle as Dulcie discovers a love as unexpected as it is liberating.
Download or read book Less Than Angels written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of a woman’s romantic entanglements with two anthropologists—and the odd mating habits of humans—from the author of Jane and Prudence. Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He’s leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student. Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants. With a lively cast of characters and a witty look at the insular world of academia, this novel from the much-loved author of Excellent Women and other modern classics is filled with poignant, playful observations about the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.
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 Jane and Prudence written by Barbara Pym and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen. Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish. Prudence, a year shy of thirty, lives in London, has an office job, and is self-sufficient and fiercely independent—until Jane decides her friend should be married. Jane has the perfect husband in mind for her former pupil: a widower named Fabian Driver. But there are other women vying for Fabian’s attention. And Pru is nursing her own highly inappropriate desire for her older, married, and seemingly oblivious employer, Dr. Grampian. What follows is a witty, delightful, trenchant story of manners, morals, family, and female bonding that redefines the social novel for a new generation.
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 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 An Unsuitable Attachment written by Barbara Pym and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2004-08 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in St Basil's, a North London parish, Barbara Pym's novel is full of high comedy. Her depiction of characters begins with Mark the vicar, and his wife Sophia who is quite obsessed with cats, as is Daisy Pettigrew, the vet's sister.
Download or read book A Lot to Ask written by Hazel Holt and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara Pym is a writer of whom it may be truly said that her life is reflected in her work. This definitive biography puts Barbara in her setting and relates her life to the age and the world in which she lived. Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material and with the help of Barbara’s sister Hilary and her friends (including Philip Larkin, Robert Liddell, Henry Harvey and Robert Smith, Hazel Holt, her friend and literary executor, has drawn a perceptive portrait of Barbara Pym, the woman as well as the novelist. From the heady atmosphere of pre-war Oxford where she embarked upon a series of highly romantic love affairs, through her wartime service in the WRNS, to early success as a published writer, we come to know a person whose humour and sharp observation were uniquely combined with a compassionate acceptance of human nature – qualities that made her such an outstanding novelist. Hazel Holt also describes the dark period from 1963, when Barbara Pym’s novels were rejected as unpublishable, through the wilderness years until 1977 when her literary reputation was triumphantly re-established by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil. Barbara Pym emerges from these pages as an entertaining companion with an insatiable curiosity and an unquenchable delight in the eccentricities of her fellows. Readers already acquainted with her novels will find great pleasure in this biography and those who are not will be irresistibly drawn towards the world of Barbara Pym.
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 What She Ate written by Laura Shapiro and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2017 One of NPR Fresh Air's "Books to Close Out a Chaotic 2017" NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads “How lucky for us readers that Shapiro has been listening so perceptively for decades to the language of food.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air Six “mouthwatering” (Eater.com) short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking, probing how their attitudes toward food can offer surprising new insights into their lives, and our own. Everyone eats, and food touches on every aspect of our lives—social and cultural, personal and political. Yet most biographers pay little attention to people’s attitudes toward food, as if the great and notable never bothered to think about what was on the plate in front of them. Once we ask how somebody relates to food, we find a whole world of different and provocative ways to understand her. Food stories can be as intimate and revealing as stories of love, work, or coming-of-age. Each of the six women in this entertaining group portrait was famous in her time, and most are still famous in ours; but until now, nobody has told their lives from the point of view of the kitchen and the table. What She Ate is a lively and unpredictable array of women; what they have in common with one another (and us) is a powerful relationship with food. They include Dorothy Wordsworth, whose food story transforms our picture of the life she shared with her famous poet brother; Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era Cockney caterer who cooked her way up the social ladder; Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and rigorous protector of the worst cook in White House history; Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, who challenges our warm associations of food, family, and table; Barbara Pym, whose witty books upend a host of stereotypes about postwar British cuisine; and Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan, whose commitment to “having it all” meant having almost nothing on the plate except a supersized portion of diet gelatin.
Download or read book Barbara in the Bodleian written by Yvonne Cocking and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara in the Bodleian: Revelations from the Pym Archives is a collection of essays by Yvonne Cocking, longtime archivist of the Barbara Pym Society and a former co-worker of Pym’s, based on her years of research in the Pym archives in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. It includes excerpts from Pym's diaries and notebooks plus correspondence and press clippings, and focuses on the nine novels published during Pym’s lifetime – their background, development, and revision, and the reactions of friends, fans, and critics. Barbara Pym was born in Shropshire in 1913. In 1931 she entered St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she earned a degree in English Literature. After serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during WWII she settled in London with her sister and took a job at an anthropological research institute. Her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, was published in 1950, followed by Excellent Women in 1952, and she published four more novels between 1953 and 1961. Her seventh novel was rejected by twenty publishers who found it too old-fashioned for the 1960s, and although she continued to write she was unable to get anything published for sixteen years. In 1977 she was named twice on the Times Literary Supplement’s list of the most underrated novelists of the century, and Quartet in Autumn was accepted for publication and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her earlier books came back into print in England and were published in the U.S., and she published two more novels before her death in 1980. ‘Yvonne Cocking has a unique knowledge of the wealth of material collected in the Pym archives. This, and the fact that she knew Barbara, has given her a special insight... The voice of the writer comes through, making it, refreshingly, a personal as well as a scholarly work..It is a work of enthusiasm and affection which will give information and pleasure to all Barbara’s admirers.’ – Hazel Holt
Download or read book The Life and Work of Barbara Pym written by Dale Salwak and published by Springer. This book was released on 1987-06-18 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Recent East written by Thomas Grattan and published by MCD. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE 2022 LA TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/HEMMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. "A wonderful, immersive debut novel . . . in [Thomas] Grattan’s hands, life’s joys are magnetic." --Patrick Nathan, The New York Times Book Review An extraordinary family saga following a mother and two teens as they navigate a new life in East Germany Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beate Haas, who defected from East Germany as a child, is notified that her parents’ abandoned mansion is available for her to reclaim. Newly divorced and eager to escape her bleak life in upstate New York, where she moved as an adult, she arrives with her two teenagers to discover a city that has become an unrecognizable ghost town. The move fractures the siblings’ close relationship, as Michael, free to be gay, takes to looting empty houses and partying with wannabe anarchists, while Adela, fascinated with the horrors of the Holocaust, buries herself in books and finds companionship in a previously unknown cousin. Over time, the town itself changes—from dismantled city to refugee haven and neo-Nazi hotbed, and eventually to a desirable seaside resort town. In the midst of that change, two episodes of devastating, fateful violence come to define the family forever. Moving seamlessly through decades and between the thoughts and lives of several unforgettable characters, Thomas Grattan’s spellbinding novel is a multigenerational epic that illuminates what it means to leave home, and what it means to return. Masterfully crafted with humor, gorgeous prose, and a powerful understanding of history and heritage, The Recent East is the profoundly affecting story of a family upended by displacement and loss, and the extraordinary debut of an empathetic and ambitious storyteller.
Download or read book Miss Pym Disposes written by Josephine Tey and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-11-13 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Miss Lucy Pym is a high school teacher of French language who wrote a pop psychology book which, to her surprise, turned out best-seller. She is invited by an old friend, a principle of Leys Physical Training College, to be a guest speaker at this women's facility. Miss Pym is warmly accepted and implored to stay at the college until the day of the demonstration. She becomes interested in the lives and personalities of the college students and their teachers. However, under apparently normal relations Miss Pym detects tension, rivalry and jealousy which eventually lead to an accident. But Miss Pym believes there is more to it.
