A classic comedy of manners from Barbara Pym, the acclaimed author of Quartet in Autumn, Jane and Prudence and Excellent Women
Barbara Pym Book order
June 2, 1913 – January 11, 1980
Barbara Pym's novels are celebrated for their subtle irony and exquisite style, offering profound insights into the intricate dance of social customs and human relationships. Beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary village and suburban life, Pym skillfully unearths the hidden desires and quiet desperations of her characters. Her work often employs the guise of gentle comedy, yet it is imbued with a deep, often tragic, undercurrent that explores the motivations driving our lives. Pym's distinctive voice captures the nuances of human connection with remarkable precision and wit.
- 2023
- 2023
A unique autobiography of Barbara Pym, celebrated author of Quartet in Autumn, includes an introduction by Jilly Cooper
- 2022
Civil To Strangers
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
This volume includes an early novel and three novellas, which were discovered and published after Barbara Pym's death in 1980.
- 2022
Jane And Prudence
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
A charming and funny tale of match-making misadventures by an author whose fans include Philip Larkin, Alexander McCall Smith and Jilly Cooper.
- 2020
No Fond Return Of Love
- 304 pages
- 11 hours of reading
'One of her very best - comic, heartrending, brave; in short, like life itself' Shirley Hazzard
- 2009
Virago Modern Classics: No Fond Return of Love
- 288 pages
- 11 hours of reading
Dulcie Mainwearing 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 by Dulcie's pretty young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it may 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.
- 2009
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.
- 2004
An Unsuitable Attachment
- 260 pages
- 10 hours of reading
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.
- 1993
- 1991
An Academic Question
- 224 pages
- 8 hours of reading
A delightful comedy of manners, An Academic Question is prime Barbara Pym
