The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym: A Times Book of the Year 2021 - Softcover

Byrne, Paula

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008322244 ISBN 13: 9780008322243

Publisher: William Collins, 2023

Synopsis

‘Captures both Barbara and her writing so miraculously’ JILLY COOPER

Picked as a Book to Look Forward to in 2021 by the Guardian, The Times and the Observer

A Radio 4 Book of the Week, April 2021

Barbara Pym became beloved as one of the wittiest novelists of the late twentieth century, revealing the inner workings of domestic life so brilliantly that her friend Philip Larkin announced her the era’s own Jane Austen. But who was Barbara Pym and why was the life of this English writer – one of the greatest chroniclers of the human heart – so defined by rejection, both in her writing and in love?

Pym lived through extraordinary times. She attended Oxford in the thirties when women were the minority. She spent time in Nazi Germany, falling for a man who was close to Hitler. She made a career on the Home Front as a single working girl in London’s bedsit land. Through all of this, she wrote. Diaries, notes, letters, stories and more than a dozen novels – which as Byrne shows more often than not reflected the themes of Pym’s own experience: worlds of spinster sisters and academics in unrequited love, of powerful intimacies that pulled together seemingly humble lives.

Paula Byrne’s new biography is the first to make full use of Barbara Pym’s archive. Brimming with new extracts from Pym’s diaries, letters and novels, this book is a joyous introduction to a woman who was herself the very best of company.

Byrne brings Barbara Pym back to centre stage as one of the great English novelists: a generous, shrewdly perceptive writer and a brave woman, who only in the last years of her life was suddenly, resoundingly recognised for her genius.

About this title

About the Author

Paula Byrne is the author of eight acclaimed works of non-fiction, most recently Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses. Earlier books include The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, The Genius of Jane Austen, and Kick: The True Story of Kick Kennedy. Paula wrote a tie-in book to the award-winning movie Belle. In 2013, to coincide with the bi-centenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Paula wrote an innovative biography The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. Other books include Mad World (about Evelyn Waugh and the writing of Brideshead Revisited) and Perdita: A Life of Mary Robinson which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award. She is the author of two novels, Look to Your Wife and Blonde Venus and was the historical consultant for PBS series Sanditon. She is founder of ReLit, a charity devoted to the mental health benefits of reading. She is married to Sir Jonathan Bate.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0008322244
• ISBN 13: 9780008322243
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 704