Introduction

Abstract

Barbara Pym was born on 2 June 1913, in Oswestry, a small town in Shropshire. She attended Huyton College, Liverpool, and in 1931 entered St Hilda’s College, Oxford, graduating three years later with a BA, with second class honours, in English. Between 1934 and 1939 she lived mostly at home. During this period she drafted Some Tame Gazelle, which failed to find a publisher, and a number of unpublished novels, the manuscripts of which are in the Bodleian Library. In 1940, Pym left home to work in the Postal and Telegraph Censorship in Bristol and in 1943 joined the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service). Between 1944 and 1945 she was stationed in Italy. In 1945 she returned to London and in 1946 took a post as a research assistant with the International African Institute, where she continued to work until 1974. In 1945 she began to revise Some Tame Gazelle, which was published by Jonathan Cape in 1950. Cape then published Excellent Women (1952), Jane and Prudence (1953), Less than Angels (1955), A Glass of Blessings (1958) and No Fond Return of Love (1961). In 1963, An Unsuitable Attachment, the seventh novel she submitted to Jonathan Cape, was unexpectedly rejected.