Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A biography of Barbara Pym which draws on hitherto unpublished material and extracts from her correspondence with Philip Larkin. The book describes her Shropshire childhood, her romantic love affairs in Oxford and her attempts to become a successful novelist.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Well-written and filled with new details about Barbara Pym's private life as well as her published and unpublished writings, this biography by Pym's literary executor is the first complete life of the once-ignored and now widely read British novelist, who died in 1980. Those familiar with A Very Private Eye , the collection of Pym's diaries and letters published as a quasi-autobiography, will find this book a supplement to it. From a vast archive of private papers Holt has gleaned nuggets that add to the overall picture we have had of Pym without significantly changing it. She is a pleasure to know, a woman with great verve in youth who became more involved in literary endeavors as she withdrew from the romantic entanglements that crowded her early years; the passion and fantasies evident in her correspondence make her a figure to be envied for her freedom from stultifying conventions, an ironic counterpoint to the ``excellent women'' of much of her fiction. But this compelling biography does not lessen the need for an objective look at the novelist's life by a biographer unassociated with her estate. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Book Review

In this ""official"" biography of English novelist Barbara Pym, Holt (Mrs. Mallory Investigates, 1989; Pym's friend, office-mate for 20 years, and literary executor) reconstructs the world Pym's novels reflect: the idiosyncrasies, perils, whims, poignancy, humor, and ""small blameless comforts"" of the ""gently tormented English middle classes"" into which the author was born. Like the novels, Holt's book is crafted, subtle, perceptive, and absorbing, the emotion subdued, the pain deferred. Modest, undemanding, well-bred Pym seemed to spend most of her life reconciling herself to ever-smaller expectations, Raised uneventfully in an English country town and educated at Oxford, except for a brief stay in Poland before WW II and a tour of duty as a WREN in Naples during the war, she lived mostly in small provincial towns, unfashionable London suburbs, or a cottage outside of Oxford. Pym attended churches and lectures, performed charitable deeds, and earned her living in various roles supervising publications at the International African Institute--all the while writing novels about people like herself (""sane ordinary people doing sane ordinary things"") and privately cultivating fantasies of love, success, and fame. An acute observer of her own emotions as well as those of others, she analyzed in letters, diaries, and fiction a lifetime of unfulfilling attachments and failed romances with unsuitable men she became obsessive about, savoring the anguish and the regret. Since her death in 1980, Pym has acquired an academic following that would have amused the author of An Academic Question, who chose to write simply ""Good books for a bad day""--and this biography is such a book. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.