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Pym, Barbara

Excellent Women; Jane and Prudence, [11] 53

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20220702101542 Not So Bad, Really | Frances Donnelly on Barbara Pym, Excellent Women | Slightly Foxed archives

Not So Bad, Really | From the Slightly Foxed archives

‘Barbara Pym’s novels are easily dismissed as interesting but marginal. But, as I came to realize, they are full of wit, balance, sly observation and a cheering sense of the ridiculous.’ Frances Donnelly, Slightly Foxed Issue 11 Greetings from Hoxton Square, where doses of wit and cheer are always welcome, especially when prescribed through the pages of good books. Many of you may have already listened to the latest episode of the Slightly Foxed podcast, all about Barbara Pym and other excellent women writers under or above the radar. If you have yet to tune in, we recommend carving out an hour for some lively bookish conversation and suggestions for your reading list. For another perspective on Pym, we’re sharing Frances Donnelly’s piece from SF Issue 11, in which a reluctant reader discovers social commentary, a keen eye for the ridiculous and enjoyable bad behaviour at the church jumble sale on revisiting Excellent Women. We do hope you’ll enjoy  it.
20220415083014 Foxed Pod Episode 41 | Barbara Pym and Other Excellent Women

Episode 41: Barbara Pym and Other Excellent Women

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Paula Byrne, author of The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, and Lucy Scholes, critic, Paris Review columnist and editor at McNally Editions, join the Slightly Foxed team to plumb the depths and scale the peaks of Barbara Pym’s writing, life and loves. From Nazi Germany to the African Institute; from London’s bedsit land to parish halls; from unrequited love affairs with unsuitable men to an epistolary friendship with Philip Larkin; and from rejection by Jonathan Cape to overnight success via the TLS, we trace Pym’s life through her novels, visiting the Bodleian and Boots lending libraries along the way. There’s joy in Some Tame Gazelle, loneliness in Quartet in Autumn, and humour and all human experience in between, with excellent women consistently her theme.
20060901152015 Cover artwork, John Holder, with apologies to Gainsborough - Slightly Foxed Issue 11

Not So Bad, Really

Frances Donnelly on Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

When I first read Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women in 1979 it certainly provoked a strong response, but hardly the admiration the cover blurb demanded for ‘one of the finest examples of high comedy of the last century’. I felt fury mixed with bafflement. For me, at that time, every novel was a possible blueprint for how to live your life. Borne along on the second wave of feminism, the only thing I and my friends were sure of was that we didn’t want lives like our mothers’. Exactly what we did want wasn’t clear. But what I didn’t want in spades was a life like that of Mildred Lathbury, one of the ‘excellent women’ of the title.

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