Civil to Strangers And Other Writings - Softcover

When Barbara Pym died in 1980 she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume brings together one complete novel, 'Civil to Strangers', and sections of three others which have been meticulously edited by Hazel Holt to form self-standing novellas that rank with the best of Barbara Pym's other work. In addition there are four excellent short stories and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a Voice', the author's only written commentary on her writing career.

The title novel is the story of Cassandra Marsh-Gibbon and her self-absorbed writer husband Adam, a young couple from the village of Up Callow in Shropshire. Both the village and Cassandra's marriage are thrown into upheaval when a mysterious Hungarian moves into town...

"An alert miniaturist... her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognisable as lapsang tea."
DAILY TELEGRAPH

"Her elegantly constructed plots are varnished with a wit which is always acute, never viscous."
THE TIMES

"Pym is the queen of all she surveys, and each page shimmers with a delicious irony... a joy to read."
SCOTSMAN

"Barbara Pym has a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies of everyday life"
PHILIP LARKIN

Barbara Pym, who died in 1980, spent the last years of her life in an Oxfordshire village, sharing a small cottage with her sister. Between 1950 and 1961 she published six novels. After a gap of sixteen years, publication of ‘Quartet in Autumn’ in 1977 was treated as a major literary event, as was her next novel, ‘The Sweet Dove Died’. Four more novels were published posthumously, as was ‘Civil to Strangers’, a collection of writings including one complete novel and sections of three others.