DOCSLIB.ORG

PARADISE on HOLD Marie-France Silver CIVIL to STRANGERS AND

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
PARADISE on HOLD Marie-France Silver CIVIL to STRANGERS AND women's writing - which embodied professional and economic opportunity. model for analyzing women's writing their voice - and their public actions Dickinson commented critically on the within a societal and historical context. were gathering critical power. Leder and American Civil War, religion and mar- Much of the strength of current literacy Abbott explore the poets' lives and work riage. practice comes from its respect for and to establish them as participants, through It has taken nearly one hundred years encouragement of the learner, her life and their work, in the events and great issues for Emily Dickinson and Christina Ros- her experience. It is interesting to see this of their day. Dickinson, for example, was setti to be assessed in terms of their work acceptance and respect applied to women affected by the American Civil War, and and their experiences, rather than the in another context, and the historical per- Rossetti was active in social reform work degree of their conformity to or diver- spective is a constructive addition to the during the middle decades of the nine- gence from traditionally acceptable femi- learner-centered approach. teenth century. nine behaviour. The examination of the lives of these Thepoets' status as single women, in an While their writing style could be women, who were educated and middle age when "unmarried women of all smoother, Leder and Abbott have as- class (both stunning examples of literate classes were society's largest group of sembled a convincing case, utilizing bi- power), may seem at first to be of limited outsiders," is presented by the authors as ographical data, critical evaluation of the relevance to the literacy movement. It is, among the most important keys to the language and writing of Dickinson and however, a useful reminder of the long poets' sense of exclusion and their result- Rossetti, and a survey of existing literary struggle women have waged to find their ing roles as clear-sighted observers of the criticism and feminist theory of language. own authentic voices and to have them society which had little room for them. Extensive notes, indexes and a selected heard. The move toward literacy is an Rossetti's poetry was informed by the bibliography all add to the usefulness of important part of women's struggle to English women reformers and radicals the study. free themselves from involuntary exclu- who were focusing on marriage reform People in the literacy field may be in- sion and to enable all our voices to be and women's exclusion from education, terested in approaching this book as a heard, pp PARADISE ON HOLD that it has been mnslated, it shouldattract old world and the new, they are as es- a good deal of attention from English tranged - psychologically and spiritu- Canada. ally -from the former as from the latter. Laura Bulger. Toronto: Bramble House, These are tales of loneliness, inadapta- They remain dutsiders, forever pulled in 1987. tion, and alienation. Bulger's characters opposing directions. "What a helluva are misfits - people caught between life!" exclaims the narrator of "VaivCm," Marie-France Silver conflicting views of life, tom between the the last story in the collection. "Always illusory world of their imagination and coming and going, from here to there, This arresting collection of short stories the drab reality of daily life, disenchanted there to here, um vaivCm .. ." by Toronto author Laura Bulger created a by the present while tormented by nos- In a classically sober style, Laura Bul- considerable sensation within the Cana- talgic memories of their long-gone youth. ger succeeds in dramatizing the peculiar dian Portuguese community when it first Many of them have immigrated to Canada ambivalence of all those who have left appeared in its original language. Now from Portugal or Italy. Tom between the one country to settle in another. CIVIL TO STRANGERS AND the importance of Oxford in her life and in rapid succession, including the much- OTHER WRITINGS her fiction. Itis from that treasure trove of praised Quartet in Autumn. Since her manuscripts that the present collection of death her sister Hilary, her literary execu- some of her earliest work is drawn. tor Hazel Holt and other friends such as Barbara Pym. Edited by Hazel Holt. The appearance of Civil to Strangers Larkin have been active in editing the Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, manuscript material, a project which has 1988. brings to thirteen the total number of Pym novels, in a thirty-eight-year publishing yielded the invaluable 1984 autobiogra- history which falls into three sharply phy, A Very Private Eye, and four posthu- Anne Pilgrim defined phases. First came the six gently mous novels: An UnsuitableAttachment, satirical comedies, peopled with "excel- Crampton Hodnet, An Academic Not long before her death in 1980, lent women" much put upon by vicars or Question, and now Civil to Strangers. To Barbara Pym gave some thought to the anthropologists (or both). This sort of make up what she describes as "a last proper disposition of her remains - her novel went out of style in theearly 1960s, sheaf' of Pym's unpublished writings, literary remains, that is, which were then leaving Pyrn in an enforced silence that Hazel Holt has added to the full text of occupying a large cardboard box in her ended only in 1977 when both Lord David Civil to Strangers sizeable extracts from bedroom. Eventually she gave all of her Cecil and Philip Larkin singled her out in three other novels, four short stories, and manuscripts, notebooks and papers to the a TLS survey as an "under-rated" author; the script of a talk Pym gave on BBC Bodleian Library in Oxford, a most suit- at the end of the decade she was able to Radio in 1978 after her rediscovery by the able (her favorite adjective) choice given place three more novels with Macmillan press and public. 142 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESlLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME When Barbara Pym, barely twenty- ample evidence of the particular pleas- in Finland and married Else Godenhjelm one, came from Oxford in the summer of ures inuinsic to her work and may well there. Finally, it seems Pym steeled her- 1934, she had received a thorough serve to create new admirers. As in the self to write a closing scene of parting, grounding inEnglishliterature,butalso in later novels, she provides a cast of mildly complete with the escaping lover's prot- the experience of unrequited love, for a dotty characters in an enclosed setting - estation "We can always be friends." The fellow undergraduate, an egotistical this time the village other two fragments, young man whom she romantically nick- of Up Callow -and or reductions, of named Lorenzo. In unromantic reality he a sharply observant novels both date was Henry Harvey -fickle, petulant and consciousness in from the early years spoiled. Separated from this unworthy Cassandra that of the war and echo object of her affections, Pyrn turned to misses no foible in many of her dii fiction-writing for solace, producing her herself or in others. entries of the time, hilarious roman d clef, Some Tame Ga- Literary allusions, reflecting as they do zelle, in which she imagined herself, her more or less obscure, such activities as sister and their friends all thirty years in abound (the title is practicing bandag- the future: Henry became the blissfully taken from ing, coping with complacent Archdeacon Henry Hoccleve Pomfret's 1700 evacuee children, tyrannizing over a wife named Agatha, poem The Choice) and placating house- and patiently adored by his parishioner and so do scenes of maids who have be- BarbaraDelinda who is now glad they high comedy such as gun "talking about never married. While this novel made the that of the rector's munitions factories rounds of publishers (ultimately it be- sermon in which he in a very sinister came her first published novel, but not unadvisedly at- way." until 1950), Pym launched into Civil to tempts to introduce The Pyrn papers Strangers, a fresh re-imaging of her fu- the metaphor of life include twenty- ture, this time in the role of Henry's wife. as embroidery: seven short stories, Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon at twenty-eight "'Some people- - don't very few of which has been married for five years gaGl- put in enough wek ever published. tonically domineering mate named stitches,' repeated the rector, in a slow, Here we have a glimpse of two early ones Adam, a writer who has laid aside his emphatic voice. 'Isn't that true of many which were rejected (one with characters novel and is "contemplating an epic of us?"' plundered from the abandoned Crampton poem." The marriage which seems Civil to Strangers is a complete and, so Hodnet), and two which, in the brief hey- threatened by his cool selfishness, sepa- far as one can tell, even, polished text, day of her rediscovery, were actually rate vacations (Adam gives himself a which is not true of the next three works, commissioned, by the Church Times and week in the all of which the edi- The New Yorker. What other fiction Bodleian for his) tor found "in a fairly writer could possibly have been so hon- and the absence of 'raw' state" and ored by those two periodicals at once? children, is in the which she says she The New Yorker story, "Across a course of the novel has "reduc d... in Crowded Room," is heavily autobio- restored by Adam's Barbara's favorite graphical, featuring an unnamed woman reluctant discovery culinary sense of the at an Oxford ceremonial dinner, senti- that he has a rival, word" to their pre- mentally dreaming of an encounter with by a "second sent forty of fifty -yes, "Gewase" -but rational enough honeymoon" in page length.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Excellent Women
    EXCELLENT WOMEN: THE NOVELS OF BARBARA PYM AND ANITA BROOKNER Elizabeth Susanna van Aswegen B.A. (Bib!.), M.A. A thesis accepted by the Faculty of Arts, Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir Christelike Boer Onderwys, in fulfilment or the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR LITTERARUM Promoter: Prof. Annette L. Combrink, M.A., D.Litt., U.E.D. POTCHEFSTROOM April 198'l ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I .wish to thank: my promoter, Professor Combrink, for her painstaking and valued guidance, as well as for her help and encouragement to this long-distance writer; the staff of the Ferdinand Postma Library and the Cape Technikon Library for their assistance; Cathy Coetzee and Brenda Bodde for their encouragement; Jenny Zinn for her impeccable typing; my daughter, Lisa, who faced the ordeal of a scrivening mother with patience and good nature. iii TABLE OF CONTimTS INTRODUCTION 2 A SURVEY OF CRITICISM: BARBARA PYM 11 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 The early novels 14 2.3 The early published novels 16 2.4 Critical acclaim 20 2.5 "The novelist most touted by one's most literate friends" 23 2.6 Criticism: 1977 to date 26 2.6.1 Some Tame Gazelle 27 2.6.2 Excellent Women 29 2.6.3 Jane and Prudence 37 2.6.4 Less than Angels 40 2.6.5 A Class of Blessings 43 2.6.6 No Fond Return of Love 48 2.6. 7 An Unsuitable Attachment 54 2.6.8 Quartet in Autumn 61 2.6.9 The Sweet Dove Died 63 2.6.10 A Few Green Leaves 68 2.6.11 Crampton Hodnet 73 2.6.12 An Academic Question 79 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Barbara Pym, Useless Longings, and Some Tame Gazelle
    Love In Her Own Peculiar Way: Barbara Pym, Useless Longings, and Some Tame Gazelle Michelle Huneven Paper presented at the 18th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 12-13 March 2016 Like Henry James, Barbara Pym’s great subject is the impossibility of love. While James wrote of an inability to love, Pym wrote of love that is not returned. Unrequited love. Useless longings. Herself an ambivalent adept of one-sided passion—she did appreciate a good, gut-twisting love pang— Pym wrote of women who love married men (Some Tame Gazelle and Jane and Prudence ), women who form intense attachments to gay men (A Glass of Blessings, The Sweet Dove Died), and women who stalk their love objects (No Fond Return of Love). Pym was 22 when, to amuse her friends at Oxford—and also to get a handle on a distressing love affair— she wrote a short story about all of them called Some Tame Gazelle. Her friends were amused, and Pym determined to expand it into a novel. Not as easy as she’d thought! It would take her fifteen years to hammer that painful romantic episode into her pitch-perfect comic masterpiece. 1. Barbara Barbara Pym as a college student was tall, attractive, well-dressed, shy, funny as hell, and very smart. Men liked her, and she was keenly interested in return. Perhaps a little too interested; her Oxford diary pays more attention to boys than to books. As she was shy, quiet, and facing her first only nominally-chaperoned co- educational environment, Pym invented a persona to face the opposite sex: the dashing and adventurous Sandra.
    [Show full text]
  • In Quartet in Autumn
    “Here’s to Us, Then”: The Difficulties and Rewards of “Making Contact” in Quartet in Autumn Kathy Ackley Paper presented at the 17th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 14-15 March 2015 A colleague, wanting to encourage volunteer social worker Janice Brabner after her discouraging initial visit to Marcia Ivory’s home, tells her: “Make contact, by force, if necessary. Believe me, it can be most reward- ing.” The statement is not only amusing in a distinctly Pymian way with its startling suggestion that force might be necessary, but also perplexing for the questions that it raises: What does she mean by “contact”? What sort of force does she have in mind? And for whom is the contact rewarding—the social worker or the person being contacted, or both? Nevertheless, the advice represents one of the novel’s major themes: making contact with others can be difficult, but it can also be enriching. While there are various kinds of contact, in this novel, the words “make contact” denote, broadly, the act of connecting or establishing a bond with another human being. There is a complexity to this kind of contact: What role does conscience or doing one’s duty play, for instance? Is the attempt to make contact sincere or merely a gesture, and if a gesture, does it not count for anything? Who ben- efits from making contact and what form does the reward take? As the novel demonstrates, almost everyone who tries to make contact with others, for whatever reasons, benefits to a certain degree, whether the attempt succeeds or fails.
    [Show full text]
  • The West Indians and the Church in an Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
    Kunapipi Volume 30 Issue 1 Article 12 2008 ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’: The West Indians and the Church in An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym Orna Raz Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Raz, Orna, ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’: The West Indians and the Church in An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym, Kunapipi, 30(1), 2008. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol30/iss1/12 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’: The West Indians and the Church in An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym Abstract Passing along the ‘brightly — almost garishly — painted houses’ of the West Indians, Mark Ainger, the male protagonist of An Unsuitable Attachment, an Anglican priest, remembers that it was in this street that his wife Sophia once saw ‘a cluster of what she took to be exotic tropical fruits in one of the windows, only to realise that they were tomatoes put there to ripen. ‘“Love apples”, she had said to Mark, and the words “love apple” had somehow given a name to the district, strange and different as it was from the rest of the parish which lay over the other side of the main road, far from the railway line’ (16). This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol30/iss1/12 137 ORNA RAZ ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’: The West Indians and the church in An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym passing along the ‘brightly — almost garishly — painted houses’ of the West Indians, Mark Ainger, the male protagonist of An Unsuitable Attachment, an Anglican priest, remembers that it was in this street that his wife Sophia once saw ‘a cluster of what she took to be exotic tropical fruits in one of the windows, only to realise that they were tomatoes put there to ripen.
    [Show full text]
  • Academics and Librarians in the Novels of Barbara Pym
    http://sajlis.journals.ac.za/ 34 S.Afr.Tydskr.Bibl.Inligtingk.,1998,66(I) 'Thankless tasks': academics and librarians in the novels of Barbara Pym Elizabeth S. van Aswegen Department of Language Practice, Department of Library and Information Studies, Cape Technikon, P.O. Box 652, Cape Town 8000 Republic of South Africa [email protected] From 1950, until her death in 1980, Barbara Pym published ten novels. However, the social and literary climate of the 'sixties and early 'seventies was not receptive to her subtle and ironic literary style, and her writing suffered an eclipse of 16 years. A renaissance in her fortunes came in January 1977, when the Times literary supplement asked a selection of critics to comment on which writers they considered the most underrated of the twentieth century; both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil selected Barbara Pym. This critical acclaim stimulated renewed interest in her work, and Quartet in ali/limn was nominated and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977. Her new status led to her canonization in the literary world, and several previously unpublished novels, as well as her edited diaries and notebooks, appeared after her death in 1980. An analysis of character in the novels reveals that Pym's peripheral characters include a large cast of academics; in addition, some of her most malicious creations are librarians, who, with their petty concerns, are averse to both books and borrowers. This article highlights her countless subtle jibes at academe; while her characters are frequently intrinsic to theme and plot (the adjective 'peripheral' is therefore to be used with caution), her most caustic scenes deflate academic ambition and pretension.
    [Show full text]
  • Walk-Ons Paper for 2012 Conference
    Walk-ons and Noises Off: Peripheral Characters in Barbara Pym’s World Sandra Goldstein Paper presented at the 15th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 16-17 March 2013 “Saw today a woman with bright purple hair, her expression under it all understandably surprised; two well-dressed upper-class women, chinless….” Barbara Pym jotted down these observations in her notebook on August 20, 1955. In A Glass of Blessings, published three years later, Wilmet Forsyth, the novel’s heroine, at a social evening in the parish hall notices “two well-dressed middle-aged women with a young girl...All three were chinless, with large aristocratic noses. Near them stood a thin woman with purple hair and a surprised expression, as if she had not expected that it would turn out to be quite that colour.” The chinless ladies are later identified, but the lady with purple hair remains nameless, never to be seen again, and yet she is a great comic creation, especially since Barbara now offers a reason for her surprised expression. The four women who make up this little tableau are like spear-carriers in an opera, or walk-ons in a stage play – actors who take on small roles with few or no lines. Barbara Pym created innumerable characters of this kind. Some do not even appear, but are merely talked about; they remain behind the scenes as “noises off” – sounds created offstage to be heard during a play’s performance. Pym gives her readers fleeting glimpses into the lives of a vast array of people spanning all segments of society.
    [Show full text]
  • GENDER and ALIENATION in Tim NOVELS OF
    ALONE TOGETiiER: GENDER AND ALIENATION in Tim NOVELS OF BARBARA PYM A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon by Margaret Anne McDonald January, 1991 © The author claims copyright. Use shall not be made of the material contained herein without proper acknowledgment. i In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N OWO ii Alone Together: Gender and Alienation in the Novels of Barbara Pym In Barbara Pym's distinctive fictional world, the designation of gender roles governs and regulates any and all activity.
    [Show full text]
  • When I First Took Over Representation of the Pym Estate, We Had Very Few Papers, Just a Handful of Documents Handed Over by Barbara’S Sister, Hilary, Before Her Death
    Working with Hazel Laura Morris Remarks read at the Annual General Meeting of the Barbara Pym Society St Hilda’s College, Oxford, 3-4 September 2016 When I first took over representation of the Pym Estate, we had very few papers, just a handful of documents handed over by Barbara’s sister, Hilary, before her death. Hazel had become Barbara’s Literary Executor, and as such was the fount of most of my knowledge. Gradually I assembled the history of Barbara’s previous publishers, both here and in the US – quite a daunting prospect with almost no formal documentation, but Hazel’s memory was astonishing and voluminous – and key. She would say ‘I have a feeling there might have been an Italian translation of Excellent Women in 1960’ or ‘Philip Larkin made special mention of that hat’ and she was invariably right. Of course Hazel knew Barbara’s work as well as her own, and appreciated every social nuance, every tiny, perfect observation in the same way. She was the perfect guardian of the Pym flame. We began to piece together the publishing jig-saw, first reverting rights in the Pym titles originally published by Jonathan Cape. In 2006 we found ourselves in the intriguing position of having interest from both Penguin and Virago for their respective Modern Classics Series. Crucially, Virago was prepared to republish each novel with its own individual jacket and new Introduction, which we felt would make maximum impact, both with booksellers and reviewers. And so it proved – the first trio were quickly followed by the second, and then the third.
    [Show full text]
  • New Insights Into Barbara Pym Robin Joyce Paper Presented at the 15Th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 16-17 March 2013
    Another Barbara: New Insights into Barbara Pym Robin Joyce Paper presented at the 15th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 16-17 March 2013 Barbara Pym, like all of us, cannot be truly known, even to her best friends. Biographers can only tell another person’s story through their own eyes and experience, we all ‘get in the way’ of the person about whom we are writing. This has happened to Barbara Pym in the biographies that have been written about her, and will happen in my interpretation of the Barbara I believe I know. However, new insights into a beloved author such as Pym are worth raising; my work joins, rather than dismisses, earlier biographies. Hilary Pym’s correspondence with Robert Liddell raises doubts about accepted understandings of her sister, such as suggestions she was a quiet spinster writer of ‘small’ novels. Hilary believes that Barbara Pym was an interesting amalgam of a number of personalities! Her contribution to A Very Private Eye, in conjunction with Pym’s Literary Executor, Hazel Holt, created a rather racy image of Pym. Robert Liddell found the work distasteful: it is clear that he sought to protect his image of Barbara. Hilary strongly defended the biography, suggesting that it corrected the erroneous depiction of Pym as a quiet person in a village, she described Barbara as frivolous rather than spinsterish. Hazel Holt’s contribution to A Very Private Eye appears to support Hilary. However, she also created her own version of Pym in A Lot to Ask. Pym’s friend from the late 1940s and literary executor, Holt concentrates on Pym’s relationships with men and their portrayal in her fiction, reflecting the views of other biographers who see romantic liaison as her eternal quest.
    [Show full text]
  • Impolite Post in Barbara Pym's the Sweet Dove
    ‘A Difficult Letter’: Impolite Post in Barbara Pym’s The Sweet Dove Died Kym Brindle Paper presented at the 20th North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, 16-18 March 2018 Oh how absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself! Everybody should try it – no life can be complete without it. – Barbara Pym, diary entry March 1940 (AVPE) I first discovered the novels of Barbara Pym as a teenager. Reading them at that time was something of a guilty secret. If Pym had languished out of fashion for a period – and was still considered by some to be a little out of step with the late 1970s and early 1980s - then my reading of her novels, as a young woman, made me perhaps also a little unfashionable too, and I think I was aware of this. Of course, I did not realise at the time that the novels available in my local book store were there after a long and distressing publication impasse – marking their appearance on sale a renaissance, as it were, of Pym’s work. I bought and enjoyed the late novels The Sweet Dove Died and An Unsuitable Attachment and I borrowed others from my local library. When many years later a chance conversation with colleague, Nick Turner, revealed that he was planning an academic conference for Pym’s Centenary in 2013, I was delighted to talk about a writer who I still largely enjoyed in splendid isolation - I still knew no one who read Pym. Following my conversation with Nick I went to my book shelves to find that the slim books with covers that I remembered so very well were missing.
    [Show full text]
  • On Campus with Barbara Pym: Crampton Hodnet (1985) and an Academic Question (1986) Roberta Simone Grand Valley State University
    Grand Valley Review Volume 2 | Issue 1 Article 15 1-1-1986 On Campus with Barbara Pym: Crampton Hodnet (1985) and An Academic Question (1986) Roberta Simone Grand Valley State University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvr Recommended Citation Simone, Roberta (1986) "On Campus with Barbara Pym: Crampton Hodnet (1985) and An Academic Question (1986)," Grand Valley Review: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 15. Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/gvr/vol2/iss1/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@GVSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Grand Valley Review by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@GVSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 63 ROBERTA SIMONE horty's truck ;var. Dot and nping off the On Campus with Barbara Pym: .. sentimental Jrty whisper, Crampton Hodnet (1985) and 1rk, trying to An Academic Question (1986) :o:d, and won­ '· When tears tad to knock Crampton Hodnet, Pym's earliest completed novel, was written in 1939 and 1940 but set aside when she got too busy with her war work to pay any more attention amous buck­ to it. After the war, she thought it to be "too dated to be publishable;' and concen­ ' had brought trated instead on Some Tame Gazelle, which was to be her first published novel (1950). ) the back of Five more of her novels were published prior to 1961, after which, for 16 years, her niddle. manuscripts were rejected for fear of an insufficient audience. During that period of ck and forth rejection, in 1971, Pym tried something new, a "Margaret Drabble sort of effort;' per­ )rch, flopped haps in order to appeal to a larger audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Cramptonhodnet: Too Outdated for Publication
    Crampton Hodnet: Too Outdated for Publication Yvonne Cocking Paper presented at the North American Conference of the Barbara Pym Society Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 23-24, 2019 It is generally agreed by Pym researchers that this early novel was begun in 1939. I don’t dispute that, but I like to confirm such details. In previous papers given the same treatment, I have usually found the answer in her literary notebooks, but she did not begin these until 1948. We know that Crampton Hodnet was written, or at least started, before WWII. I hoped that her diaries might yield some information. Indeed, looking at Barbara’s earliest diaries (begun in 1932), I found the first mention of her literary life when she wrote on Tuesday 19 Nov 1935, ‘Yesterday I started another novel ... it promises to be quite fun.’ And in July 1936, ‘I am now on the sixth chapter of my second novel.’ Her second novel. Not Crampton Hodnet then, but probably Adam and Cassandra (later published as Civil to Strangers), and this was confirmed in a later entry. I found nothing more about her work in Oxford her 1937 and 1938 diaries, but on 22nd December 1939, only weeks after the outbreak of war, she wrote: ‘In my bath determined to finish my Oxford novel and send it on the rounds’. Oxford! Since Crampton Hodnet is her only novel set in Oxford, this had to be it. From the evidence of her diaries, the novel could have been started any time between 1937 and 1939. The character of Simon Beddoes was surely based on Julian Amery, with whom Barbara had a brief affair between December 1937 and January 1938, so that probably eliminates 1937.
    [Show full text]