Our literary gift bundle, A Taste of Slightly Foxed, combines the current issue of the quarterly – Issue 84 – and our new Slightly Foxed Edition, No. 69: Diary of a Provincial Lady, and makes an ideal introduction to Slightly Foxed.
Slightly Foxed, Issue 84
Norma Clarke enjoys the letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, Samuel Saloway-Cooke joins Delia in the kitchen, Alex Woodcock learns his trade as a stonemason, Ysenda Maxtone Graham sympathizes with E. M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady, Nigel Andrew remembers some stirring narrative verse, Robin Blake toughs it out with Simenon, Flora Neville relishes the dark stories of Edward Gorey, Richard Smyth unpicks the art of the cryptic crossword, Adam Sisman has the last laugh with Lucky Jim, Felicity James remembers the world of John Updike’s Couples and much more besides . . .
SF Edition, Diary of a Provincial Lady (No. 69)
The Diary of a Provincial Lady, which has many echoes of E. M. Delafield’s own life, first appeared in instalments in Time and Tide, then in book form in 1930. It was an immediate hit, speaking as it did to the millions of middle-class wives trapped in dull conventional marriages, struggling to pay the bills and keep up appearances in those difficult inter-war years. For us, the setting is different, but the emotions are all too familiar, and the brisk, unself-pitying voice of the Provincial Lady still rings true. Her fictional diary is a funny, wryly observed picture of a marriage between the wars, and its spirit lives on in all those journalistic columns describing life in the ‘squeezed middle’ today.
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