Barbara Pym: 24 books

Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour,...

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...

‘Could one write a book based on one’s diaries over thirty years? I certainly have enough material,’ wrote Barbara Pym. This book, selected from the diaries, notebooks and letters of this much loved novelist to form a continuous narrative, is indeed a unique autobiography, providing a privileged...

Barbara Pym was an incomparable chronicler of ordinary, quiet lives. With warmth, humour, precision and great vividness, she gave her best characters an independent life we recognise as totally familiar. In A Few Green Leaves, her last novel, her heroine is Emma Howick, anthropologist. Through her...

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...

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...

En 1977, le Times désigne Barbara Pym comme l'un des auteurs les plus injustement méconnus du XXe siècle. Une remise en lumière qui sonne comme une renaissance pour l'écrivain, érigée alors en virtuose dans l'art de la comédie douce-amère. Avec Des femmes remarquables, l'un de ses plus fameux...

Scritto tra il 1970 e il 1972 e pubblicato postumo nel 1986, quest’ultimo romanzo di Barbara Pym è al tempo stesso ironico e cupo. Ironico perché dipinge con l’usuale maestria un ambiente ristretto, quello accademico, fatto di grette rivalità e gremito di uomini egocentrici e superficiali....

Barbara Pym’s early novel takes us into 1950s England, as seen through the funny, engaging, yearning eyes of a restless housewife Wilmet Forsyth is bored. Bored with the everyday routine of her life. Bored with teatimes filled with local gossip. Bored with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant...

Set in St Basil’s, an undistinguished North London parish, An Unsuitable Attachment is indeed full of the high comedy for which Barbara Pym is famed. There is Mark Ainger, the vicar, who introduces his sermons with remarks like ‘Those of you who are familiar with the church of Santa Maria Maggiore...

Teinté d'humour et d'ironie, paru en Angleterre en 1950 et chez Fayard en 1989, le premier roman de la grande Barbara Pym chronique délicieusement les intrigues d'une paroisse faussement paisible, qui fleure bon la campagne anglaise... Le nouveau vicaire semblait être un jeune homme très convenable,...

Con ironia vengono raffigurati le debolezze degli esseri umani rendendo straordinaria la vita di gente normale. Anni cinquanta, Londra. Dulcie fa la correttrice di bozze. Pymescamente single dopo un amore finito male, vive da sola in una grande casa, lasciatale dai genitori. Autocondannatasi...

Between the amorous antique dealer Humphrey and his good-looking nephew James glides the magnificent Leonora, delicate as porcelain, cool as ice. Can she keep James in her thrall? Or will he be taken from her by a lover, like Phoebe . . . or Ned, the wicked American? 'A highly distinctive and...

Dulcie Mainwaring, la heroína de este libro, es una de esas «mujeres excelentes», aparentemente desinteresadas, que siempre está; ayudando a los demás pero no es capaz de cuidar de sí; misma, especialmente por lo que concierne al terreno amoroso. En 'Amor no correspondido', una novela a la altura...