Barbara Pym (1913-1980) · AuthorAuthor
Barbara Pym
1913-1980 · English novelist of ironic social comedies set in postwar England
About Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym (1913–1980) was an English novelist known for gently ironic comedies of spinsters, curates and anthropologists in postwar England. She worked for many years at the International African Institute in London, which supplied the anthropologists of her fiction. After a successful run of novels in the 1950s she was dropped by her publisher in 1963, and was rediscovered in 1977 when Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil named her one of the most underrated writers of the century; Quartet in Autumn was then shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Notable works
- Excellent Women (1952)
- Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
- Jane and Prudence (1953)
- A Glass of Blessings (1958)
- Quartet in Autumn (1977)
- The Sweet Dove Died (1978)
On this site
Excellent WomenBarbara Pym
1952 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel
Excellent Women is narrated by Mildred Lathbury, an unmarried clergyman's daughter just past thirty, living in a shabby part of London near Victoria in the austere years after the Second World War. She works part-time for a society aiding impoverished gentlewomen and devotes herself to her parish church, St Mary's, where she helps the unmarried vicar, Julian Malory, and his sister Winifred.