Author(s): Barbara Pym

Literature | Biography and Memoir

The stunning autobiography of Barbara Pym, celebrated author of Quartet in Autumn, Jane and Prudence, and Excellent Women.

"I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym." RICHARD OSMAN
"Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure." JILLY COOPER
"Could one write a book based on one's diaries over thirty years? I certainly have enough material," wrote Barbara Pym.

Selected from the diaries, notebooks, and letters of this beloved novelist A Very Private Eye is a unique, continuous narrative autobiography, providing a privileged insight into a writer's mind.

Philip Larkin wrote that Barbara Pym had "a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies of everyday life." Her autobiography amply demonstrates this, as it traces her life from exuberant times at Oxford in the Thirties, through the war when, scarred by an unhappy love affair, she joined the WRNS, to the published novelist of the Fifties. It deals with the long period when her novels were out of fashion and no one would publish them, her rediscovery in 1977, and the triumphant success of her last few years.

It is now possible to describe a place, situation or person as "very Barbara Pym." At once funny and moving, A Very Private Eye shows the variety and depth of her own story.

Review: I'd sooner a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen -- Philip Larkin
Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years . . . Spectacular * The Sunday Times *
Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour. -* The Times *
An alert miniaturist . . . Her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognisable as Lapsang tea * The Daily Telegraph *
One does not laugh out loud while reading Barbara Pym; that would be too much. One smiles. One smiles and puts down the book to enjoy the smile. Then one picks it up again and a few minutes later an unexpected observation on human foibles makes one smile again -- Alexander McCall Smith
My favourite writer . . . I pick up her book with joy, as though I were meeting an old dear friend who comforts me, extends my vision and makes me roar with laughter -- Jilly Cooper
So quintessentially English . . . If you read A Very Private Eye, you'll discover there all the quietly remarkable qualities that caused the publishing world to reverse itself about her * The New York Times *
Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures, she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life -- Anne Tyler
Pym makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page -- Mavis Cheek

Author Biography: Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was a British novelist best known for her series of satirical novels on English middle-class society. A graduate of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, Pym published the first of her nine novels, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950, followed by five more books. Despite this early success and continuing popularity, Pym went unpublished from 1963 to 1977. Her work was rediscovered after a famous article in The Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated Pym as the most underrated writer of the century. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize.