Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

“[Strachey's] sharp eye, playful language and perfect comic timing will not only have you laughing, it'll leave you wondering why the rom-com formula isn't imaginatively tweaked more often.”—NPR's 'Books We Like'

“A brilliant, bittersweet upstairs-downstairs comedy.”—Guardian

“Anyone facing a deluge of summer nuptials will find breezy relief in Julia Strachey’s 1932 novella, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

It is a brisk English March day, and Dolly is getting ready to marry the wrong man. Waylaid by the sulking admirer who lost his chance, an astonishingly oblivious mother bustling around and making a fuss, and her own sinking dread, the bride-to-be struggles to reach the altar.

Dolly knew, as she looked round at the long wedding-veil stretching away forever, and at the women, too, so busy all around her, that something remarkable and upsetting in her life was steadily going forward.

Julia Strachey (1901-1979) was born in India, where her father, a brother of Lynon Strachey, was in the Civil Service. After her parents' divorce she lived with relations in England and went to Bedales and the Slade and then worked as a model, as a photographer and in publishing. She first married the sculptor Stephen Tomlin and then the art critic Lawrence Gowing; her two novels appeared in 1932 and 1951.

Julia Strachey (1901-79) was born in India and lived with relations in England after her parents divorced. She worked as a model at Poiret, as a photographer, and as a publisher's reader. She was married to the sculptor Stephen Tomlin from 1927-34. In 1939 Julia met the art critic Lawrence Gowing, who was twenty-one; the two married after fifteen years. Frances Partridge (1900-2004) was the oldest surviving member of the Bloomsbury Group, having been married to one of its members and counting most of them as her friends. Julia Strachey was one of her oldest friends and she wrote "Julia" a biography. Partridge kept a diary all her life and several volumes have been published by Little Brown.