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The Life and Work of Barbara Pym the Life and Work of Barbarapym THE LIFE AND WORK OF BARBARA PYM THE LIFE AND WORK OF BARBARAPYM Edited by Dale Salwak Professor of English Citrus College, California M MACMILLAN PRESS © Dale Salwak 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The life and work of Barbara Pym. 1. Pym, Barbara - Criticism and interpretation I. Salwak, Dale 823'.914 PR6066.Y58Z/ ISBN 978-1-349-08540-8 ISBN 978-1-349-08538-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08538-5 For Hilary Walton Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements and Note on References xi Notes on the Contributors xii Part I The Life 1 Excellent Woman Shirley Hazzard 3 2 The Quest for a Career Constance Malloy 4 3 The Novelist in the Field: 1946-74 Hazel Holt 22 4 Fellow Writers in a Cotswold Village Gilbert Phelps 34 Part II The Work 5 Barbara Pym's Novelistic Genius Joyce Carol Oates 43 6 The World of Barbara Pym Penelope Lively 45 7 Where, Exactly, is the Pym World? John Bayley 50 8 How Pleasant to Know Miss Pym Robert Smith 58 9 Miss Pym and Miss Austen A. L. Rowse 64 10 Love and Marriage in the Novels Mary Strauss-Noll 72 11 Barbara Pym and the War of the Sexes John Halperin 88 12 The Novelist as Anthropologist Muriel Schulz 101 13 Literary Allusions in the Novels Lotus Snow 120 14 The Narrative Sense of Barbara Pym Robert f. Graham 142 15 The Pym Papers Janice Rossen 156 vii viii Contents Part III In Retrospect 16 The Rejection of Barbara Pym Philip Larkin 171 17 A Success Story Robert Liddell 176 18 The Importance of Connecting Frances H. Bachelder 185 19 Years of Neglect Gail Godwin 193 Notes 194 Select Bibliography 203 Index 206 Preface The rising tide of interest in Barbara Pym since 1977, when both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil identified her as one of the most underrated writers of the twentieth century,1 invites a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of her life and work. This collection responds to that invitation by bringing together in one volume essays specially written for the occasion (with only a few exceptions) by nineteen distinguished men and women. The volume is divided into three sections. The essays in Part I consider Barbara Pym's life. Those in Part II evaluate her novels from a variety of fresh perspectives. And the contributions which make up Part III discuss, in a general way, her human and artistic achievement. Together, all these provide special insight into the work, the woman behind the work, and the wide appeal of both. Ideally the reader of this book is someone who has already encountered the pleasures of Pym' s novels and wants to know more about them as well as their author. At the same time many people have heard of Barbara Pym but have not yet read her works, and I hope that this book will be useful to them as well. Several of the contributors knew Barbara Pym. I feel deprived at never having met her. I am told that she was very much like her characters: dignified, friendly, honest, humorous and unpretentious. Photographs of her reveal the sort of gentle, intelligent face we expect to see in wise, kind teachers, reflecting an unselfishness and a patient endurance. One acquaintance wrote, 'She had that wonderful combination of quiet charm and good manners that made you feel she really wanted to talk to you.'2 Another wrote, 'In meeting Barbara one never felt that she had missed out on any part of life.'3 It is appropriate that twelve of the nineteen contributors to this volume should live outside Great Britain. This offers testimony to her international readership. The reasons for her ever-growing acclaim are many and varied, of course, and on that matter I shall let the contributors speak for themselves. Certainly her appeal to the reading public lies partly in her fulfilment of the most fundamental requirements of any great writer: that she be a ix X Preface storyteller, a teacher, but, above all, an enchanter. 4 Barbara Pym has done what the greatest and liveliest writers usually do: she has made a world that is uniquely her own, an enchanted place both real and varied. 'In minute, breathtaking ways, she sizes up the harms, the conventions, the pleasures, and the perversities of small lives and bestows upon them the rare beauty and clarity of her own genius.'5 Like many admirers, I came upon her novels through the recommendation of a friend. Three years later, in 1983, after I had read everything by her and about her that I could find, the idea occurred to me to produce a volume of essays. Early in 1984 I wrote to people I knew who were familiar with her work. One colleague's response typifies the letters I received: 'You have hit me in a vulnerable place: I love Barbara Pym.'6 That it has been possible to produce this collection within a comparatively short time is owing to the enthusiasm of the contributors. I am indebted to all of them. I am also indebted to a number of good people who have expressed from its beginning a keen interest in this project. I should like to thank the following for their personal encouragement and professional advice: Professor John Halperin of Vanderbilt University; Professor Stephen C. Moore of the University of Southern California; Professor Edwin A. Dawes of the University of Hull; Professors David Sundstrand and Linda Humphrey of Citrus College; Paul DeAngelis, Caroline Press and Jean Rawitt of E. P. Dutton; Frances A. Arnold of the Macmillan Press; Catherine Aird, Hazel Holt, Hilary Walton and the late Philip Larkin; my wife, Patricia; and my parents, Stanley and Frances H. Salwak. To all of them I am indeed grateful. 'No reputation is more than snowfall. It vanishes.'7 True for some writers, perhaps, but Barbara Pym's reputation may be an exception. Her books are attracting an ever-widening audience as the years pass. Now the critical interest is there as well. 'Quiet, paradoxical, funny and sad,' Eudora Welty wrote in 1982, '[Barbara Pym's novels] have the iron in them of permanence too.'8 I cannot improve upon that judgement. Here, then, is the life and work of Barbara Pym - a writer whose time has come. DALESALWAK Glendora and London Acknowledgements and Note on References Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published materials: the late Philip Larkin and Macmillan London for the Foreword to An Unsuitable Attachment (1982), reprinted here as 'The Rejection of Barbara Pym'; Penelope Lively and the editor for 'The World of Barbara Pym', Literary Review, 1 (1980) 8-9; Robert Smith and the editor for 'How Pleasant to Know Miss Pym', Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 11 (1971) 63-8; John Murray (Publishers) Ltd for 'Business Girls', in fohn Betjeman's Collected Poems, 1980. The pieces by Gail Godwin, Shirley Hazzard and Joyce Carol Oates were written to be read on the occasion of 'A Celebration of Barbara Pym', the Gramercy Park Hotel, 3 October 1984, and are here published for the first time by the kind permission of the authors and Paul DeAngelis, E. P. Dutton, New York. Page references to the novels (citing the most recent British editions, as listed in the Bibliography) are supplied in the notes at the end of the book. Letters, diaries and manuscripts lodged at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, are generally cited by manuscript number (prefixed PYM) or, in some instances, by page in A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters, by the kind permission of Hazel Holt and Tim Rogers. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright-holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. xi Notes on the Contributors Frances H. Bachelder, concert pianist and teacher for over forty years, studied at the University of Massachusetts and Purdue University. She now resides in San Diego, California, and while continuing her career as pianist also writes poetry and non­ fiction. John Bayley is Warton Professor of English Literature and Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. His publications include In Another Country (novel), The Romantic Survival: A Study in Poetic Evolution, The Characters of Love, Tolstoy and the Novel, Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary, The Uses of Division: Unity and Disharmony in Literature, An Essay on Hardy and Shakespeare and Tragedy. Gail Godwin is the author of The Perfectionists, Glass People, The Odd Woman, Violet Clay, A Mother and Two Daughters and The Finishing School (novels), and two short-story collections, Dream Children and Mr Bedford and the Muses. Robert J. Graham is Associate Provost/Dean and former Head, Division of Humanities, at the Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. His essays on English education and on American newspaper, magazine and book publishing have appeared in books and journals.
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