Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym's early novel takes us into 1950s England, as seen through the funny, engaging, yearning eyes of a restless housewife....

Included in this collection are the BBC Radio dramatisations of some of her most beloved books - plus bonus material....

After being jilted by her fiance, 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....

A warm, affectionate depiction of a postwar English village, Some Tame Gazelle perfectly captures the quotidian details that make up everyday life. With its vibrant supporting cast, it's also a poignant story of unrequited love....

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....

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 19-year-old student....

Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those excellent women - the smart, supportive, repressed women....

Mildred Lathbury is one of those 'excellent women' who is often taken for granted....

Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists....

It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates....

Over the years, as Barbara Pym replaced Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, even Jane Austen, as my most loved author....

In a provincial university town, Caro Grimstone, a dissatisfied faculty wife, becomes the unwilling accomplice to her husband Alan's ambitions. When she volunteers to read to a blind esteemed anthropologist in a nursing home, Alan seizes the opportunity to steal his papers....

Formidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties for young academics and acting as watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. Anthea, her great-niece, is in love with a dashing undergraduate with political ambitions. Of this, Miss Doggett thoroughly approves....

Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking, and fairly young - but very bored....

Dulcie Mainwaring 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. Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty young niece....

When Barbara Pym died in 1980, she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, Civil to Strangers, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a Voice', Pym's only written comment on her writing career....