Miss Bunting (VMC) - Softcover

Thirkell, Angela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034900756X ISBN 13: 9780349007564

Publisher: Virago, 2017

Synopsis

Barsetshire in the war years. Miss Bunting, governess of choice to generations of Barsetshire aristocracy, has been coaxed out of retirement by Sir Robert and Lady Fielding to tutor their daughter Anne, delicate, sixteen years old, and totally lacking in confidence.

When Anne makes friends with Heather Adams, the gauche daughter of a nouveau riche entrepreneur, her mother is appalled. Miss Bunting, however, shows an instinctive understanding of the younger generation - perhaps, having lost so many of her former pupils to the war, she is more sympathetic to their needs. She may be a part of the old social order, where everyone knows their place, but is wise enough to realise that the war has turned everything on its head and nothing will ever be the same again - even in rural Barsetshire.
First published in 1945, Miss Bunting is a charming social comedy of village life during the Second World War.

About this title

About the Author

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her grandfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising - set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope - met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married and had four children.

From Publishers Weekly

From the '30s to the '60s, Thirkell wrote a novel a year, most of which were set in an updated version of Trollope's Barsetshire. This installment, originally published in 1945 is a mild and rather obvious comedy of manners set during one summer late in WWII, when traditional order is being brought to an end by the rise of industrial wealth and the damages inflicted by six years of war. The story revolves around a wide group of the upper class--primarily landowners and clergymen--who have dominated this small town, and how they will respond to arrival of a coarse but dynamic industrial tycoon. Miss Bunting is an elderly ex-governess who has been hired by one family to instruct and care for their 17-year-old daughter, Anne. This gentle comedy radiates out to encompass fictitious, "Mixo-Lydian" politics; the even more complicated goings-on of the C. of E.; and the entirely inscrutable underpinnings of British class structure. There are numerous characters, some dashing in and out of the narrative with such speed that the only thing they contribute is the memory of a vaguely humorous name. Some will find the book dated, but for Thirkell's many readers in this country, it will be a welcome addition to the growing library of her work.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 034900756X
• ISBN 13: 9780349007564
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288