A Few Green Leaves

My favourite writer … I pick up her books with joy – Jilly Cooper
I’m a huge fan of Barbara Pym – Richard Osman
I’d sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen – Philip Larkin
Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures; she reminds us of the heartbreaking silliness of everyday life – Anne Tyler
‘Brilliant, hilarious and so very, very English * Daily Mail *
Her best [novels] are sheer delight, and all of them companionable. Quiet, paradoxical, funny and sad, they have the iron in them of permanence too – John Updike
Brilliant, hilarious, poignant and so very, very English * Time Magazine *
[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. Of how many authors can you honestly say that? – Mavis Cheek
Beneath the gentle surfaces of her novels is a slow-building comedy, salt wit in a saline drip * New York Times *
A splendid humorous writer – John Betjeman
A modern Jane Austen – Alexander McCall Smith

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 Despite this early success and continuing popularity, Pym went unpublished from 1963 to 1977.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.

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