CHAPTER 1 MANNERS and COMEDY 1. Here and Throughout
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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. -
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. -
Glyn Morgan Press Release 2014 Exhibition: Glyn Morgan “Behind the Landscape” Oils and Collages
GLYN MORGAN PRESS RELEASE 2014 EXHIBITION: GLYN MORGAN “BEHIND THE LANDSCAPE” OILS AND COLLAGES 21ST JUNE TO 13TH JULY, 2014 AT CHAPPEL GALLERIES, COLCHESTER ROAD, CHAPPEL, ESSEX CO6 2DE EXTENDED HOURS FOR THE DURATION OF THE EXHIBITION: OPEN EVERY DAY 10AM TO 5PM 01206 240326 [email protected] www.chappelgalleries.co.uk THIS BEING OUR FIRST EXHIBITION IN FOUR YEARS OUTSIDE OF OUR RESIDENT ARTIST, WLADYSLAW MIRECKI, WE ARE VERY PLEASED TO BE SHOWING 30 WORKS BY THE ARTIST GLYN MORGAN. IN 2010 WE HAD TO HALT OUR ROLLING PROGRAMME OF TWELVE CHANGING EXHIBITIONS A YEAR WHICH WE HAD RUN FOR TWENTY FOUR YEARS. WE REGRETTED THAT GLYN MORGAN WAS THE NEXT EXHIBITION ON THAT YEAR’S CALENDAR AND IT WAS CANCELLED AT VERY SHORT NOTICE. GLYN WAS VERY UNDERSTANDING AND IT IS WITH GREAT PLEASURE THAT WE ARE NOW IN A POSITION TO HOLD AN EXHIBITION WHICH WILL INCLUDE SOME WORKS FROM THAT PERIOD (AND BEFORE) AND NEW WORK COMPLETED SINCE. In conversation with Glyn Morgan, artist, very soon one is aware that the guiding passion for his artistic life in the past and for always was his time at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing run by Cedric Morris and Lett Haines. It was 1943 in Pontypridd that they met, Glyn a young student at the Art School, Cardiff and Cedric was selecting work at an exhibition; Glyn was immediately invited to spend time with him in East Anglia. Fostered by the heady bohemian atmosphere of this school (and home), arriving from Wales, Glyn shared a special place there from 1944 for 38 years. -
Get Book # Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett
TQOTPZQN4L5T » Doc Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and the East Anglian School... Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, A rth ur Lett-Haines and th e East A nglian Sch ool of Painting and Drawing (Paperback) Filesize: 3.92 MB Reviews It in a of the best publication. It is among the most remarkable publication i have read through. Your lifestyle period will be change once you complete reading this article publication. (Crystal Rolfson) DISCLAIMER | DMCA 5Q6DUZU54SXK > Kindle < Benton End Remembered: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and the East Anglian School... BENTON END REMEMBERED: CEDRIC MORRIS, ARTHUR LETT-HAINES AND THE EAST ANGLIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND DRAWING (PAPERBACK) Unicorn Publishing Group, United Kingdom, 2018. Paperback. Condition: New. Language: English . Brand New Book. In 1940, Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, both established artists with international reputations who had become disillusioned with the commercial aspects of the art world, moved to Benton End, overlooking the River Brett on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suolk. What they found there was a somewhat ramshackle but capacious sixteenth-century farmhouse, standing in over three acres of walled gardens lost beneath brambles and elder trees; the house had not been lived in for fieen years. But Benton End became both their home and the new premises of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing which, in 1937, they had founded together in Dedham, Essex. From 1940 until Lett Haines died in 1978 and Cedric Morris in 1982, Benton End was an exotic world apart where art, literature, good food, gardening and lively conversation combined to produce an extraordinarily stimulating environment for amateurs and professionals alike. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
Vol. 24, No. 1 Spring 2018
Green leaves The Journal of the Barbara Pym Society Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Spring 2018 “A few green leaves can make such a difference.” — Miss Grundy, A Few Green Leaves Report on the North American Conference, Cambridge MA, 17–18 March 2018 by Denise Marois-Wolf fter creating so many delightful excellent women, why The evening concluded with a singalong of ‘Land of Hope and A did Barbara Pym create the anti-excellent Leonora Glory’ and ‘Jerusalem’ with waving Union Jack. Eyre? Is Leonora redeemed, or even redeemable by the end of Saturday was filled with wonderful papers, food, The Sweet Dove Died? On whom did Pym base the character fellowship, and the opportunity to buy Pym-themed of James, and what are some of the hidden paraphernalia. The morning started with a codes that give us a clue to the characters’ true continental breakfast of bagels and coffee in intentions? the Austin Hall lobby, giving participants who More than a hundred Pymmites came to the hadn’t seen each other since last year a chance Barbara Pym Society’s 20th annual North to catch up before adjourning to the American Conference in Cambridge, auditorium, which was decorated with large, Massachusetts, braving the weather that was lavish bouquets of spring flowers. cold even for March. A recent storm that Dr Kym Brindle, one of four first-time swept the Northeast brought brisk winds and presenters, started the conference with a paper left snow piled up along streets and sidewalks. on the letters, impolite and otherwise, in TSDD Still, the turnout was good, with participants and Leonora’s obsessive need to surround coming all the way from the UK, Israel, Paris, herself with perfection, both in objects and Ontario, and across the United States. -
Talking About John Clare
TALKING ABOUT JOHN CLARE RONALD BLYTHE TRENT BOOKS 1 TALKING ABOUT JOHN CLARE 2 3 Ronald Blythe Talking About John Clare Trent Editions 1999 4 By the same author A Treasonable Growth Immediate Possession The Age of Illusion Akenfield The View in Winter From the Headlands Divine Landscapes The Stories of Ronald Blythe Private Words: Letters and Diaries from the Second World War Word from Wormingford Published by Trent Editions 1999 Trent Editions Department of English and Media Studies The Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane Nottingham NG11 8NS Copyright (c) Ronald Blythe The cover illustration is a hand-tinted pen and ink drawing of Selborne, by John Nash, by kind permission of the John Nash Estate. The back cover portrait of Ronald Blythe is by Richard Tilbrook. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review. Printed in Great Britain by Goaters Limited, Nottingham ISBN 0 905 488 44 X 5 CONTENTS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABBREVIATIONS AND PRINCIPAL SOURCES I. AN INHERITED PERSPECTIVE II. ‘SOLVITUR AMBULANDO’: CLARE AND FOOTPATH WALKING III.CLARE IN HIDING IV. CLARE IN POET’S CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY V.CLARE’S TWO HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY VI. THE DANGEROUS IDYLL VII.THE HELPSTON BOYS VIII. THOMAS HARDY AND JOHN CLARE IX.‘NOT VERSE NOW, ONLY PROSE!’ X.RIDER HAGGARD AND THE DISINTEGRATION OF CLARE’S WORLD XI. EDMUND BLUNDEN AND JOHN CLARE XII.PRESIDENTIAL FRAGMENTS XIII. KINDRED SPIRITS XIV. COMMON PLEASURES INDEX OF NAMES 6 For R.S. -
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. -
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.