What do you think?
Rate this book
Business as Usual
Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford was first published in 1933. It's a delightful illustrated novel in letters from Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl fresh out of university who is determined to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year, despite the mutterings of her surgeon fiance.
After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings rapidly diminish, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of Everyman's (a very thin disguise for Selfridges), and rises rapidly through the ranks to work in the library, where she has to enforce modernising systems on her entrenched and frosty colleagues.
Business as Usual is charming: intelligent, heart-warming, funny, and entertaining. It's deeply interesting as a record of the history of shopping in the 1930s, and also fascinating for its unflinching descriptions of social conditions, poverty and illegitimacy.
After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings rapidly diminish, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of Everyman's (a very thin disguise for Selfridges), and rises rapidly through the ranks to work in the library, where she has to enforce modernising systems on her entrenched and frosty colleagues.
Business as Usual is charming: intelligent, heart-warming, funny, and entertaining. It's deeply interesting as a record of the history of shopping in the 1930s, and also fascinating for its unflinching descriptions of social conditions, poverty and illegitimacy.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1933
15 people are currently reading
1120 people want to read
About the author
Jane Oliver
18 books6 followers‘Jane Oliver’ was the pen-name of Helen Evans (1903 - 1970). Formerly novelist Clemence Dane’s secretary, she developed a writing career, and wrote many successful novels with Ann Stafford (the pen-name of Anne Pedler). Business as Usual was their first joint novel.
Jane became a pilot and married the author John Llewelyn Rhys, who was killed in the war. She founded the Llewelyn Rhys Prize in his memory. She later lived in Hampshire near Anne Pedler, and cared for her in her illness.
Jane became a pilot and married the author John Llewelyn Rhys, who was killed in the war. She founded the Llewelyn Rhys Prize in his memory. She later lived in Hampshire near Anne Pedler, and cared for her in her illness.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
September 17, 2021
4.5 stars
“I know I couldn’t wait for you if I were idle, sitting about and trying to fill the gap between one lovely experience and another with those dreary little sociabilities that you despise as much as I do. I wish I had the kind of talents that you’d really like to have about the house, my lamb.”
Twenty-seven year old Hilary Fane strikes out on her own for a year in London while waiting for her surgeon fiancé to get his career underway. She’s college educated and recently let go from her previous employment due to budget cuts. She doesn’t need to work, however. Her parents would be happy if she stayed at home with them for a year. And naturally, fiancé Basil would prefer she wait patiently for him to whisk her off her feet and carry her away in wedded bliss. But Hilary won’t have any of that. What begins really as a lark of sorts turns into a serious endeavor, but one laced with humor and a good dose of social commentary and feminism. It must have been a breath of fresh air to read this when published in 1933. Hell, it felt good reading it now, nearly nine decades later.
“The worst of earning one’s living, Basil, is that it leaves so little time over to live in. During the winter you’ve got to hand over the eight daylight hours to Everyman’s, and only keep the twilight bits at each end. And most of them go to waste in sleep.”
The novel is written as a series of letters from Hilary to her family and to Basil. Interspersed throughout are brief company memos from Everyman’s, Hilary’s new employer and a fictional department store which is apparently highly reminiscent of a UK based store still in existence today. Sketches also appear intermittently and add a bit of charm to the whole package. Oh, and as a nice tidbit for us book lovers – she gets assigned to the Book Floor and later to the Library! She’s surrounded by books. No one can blame her for eventually falling in love with her job and her newly found independence, right?!
“They were in baskets, in gaping parcels, in tottering piles on tables, each with a pinkish slip of paper sticking out, like a tired dog’s tongue.”
I loved reading about the interactions between Hilary and her coworkers and supervisors. Hilary has chosen to be here, but she is well aware that not all the women at Everyday’s have an option to run home to mom and dad or that gallant fiancé. She’s also recognized by the others as an outsider and scorned for her inexperience in the world of business. But Hilary is determined to make this work. She’s no pushover!
“The whole place is vile with intrigue and corner-conversations that stop when I come past. I thought this sort of atmosphere was only found in girls’ boarding schools. It seems to belong to business as well. I’d no idea what devils women could be to other women in an entirely passive way…”
The tone of the letters to home eventually shifts and the reader can see Hilary’s growth through her writing. I admire the way authors Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford achieved this. Epistolary novels can be hit or miss with me, but this was a smashing success. The ending felt a wee bit rushed, but that’s mainly because I wanted to chum around with Hilary a little longer. Maybe see if some of her fearlessness would rub off on me.
“I love you frightfully; but I want your companionship and tolerance and understanding even more than other things. I wonder if you see?”
“I know I couldn’t wait for you if I were idle, sitting about and trying to fill the gap between one lovely experience and another with those dreary little sociabilities that you despise as much as I do. I wish I had the kind of talents that you’d really like to have about the house, my lamb.”
Twenty-seven year old Hilary Fane strikes out on her own for a year in London while waiting for her surgeon fiancé to get his career underway. She’s college educated and recently let go from her previous employment due to budget cuts. She doesn’t need to work, however. Her parents would be happy if she stayed at home with them for a year. And naturally, fiancé Basil would prefer she wait patiently for him to whisk her off her feet and carry her away in wedded bliss. But Hilary won’t have any of that. What begins really as a lark of sorts turns into a serious endeavor, but one laced with humor and a good dose of social commentary and feminism. It must have been a breath of fresh air to read this when published in 1933. Hell, it felt good reading it now, nearly nine decades later.
“The worst of earning one’s living, Basil, is that it leaves so little time over to live in. During the winter you’ve got to hand over the eight daylight hours to Everyman’s, and only keep the twilight bits at each end. And most of them go to waste in sleep.”
The novel is written as a series of letters from Hilary to her family and to Basil. Interspersed throughout are brief company memos from Everyman’s, Hilary’s new employer and a fictional department store which is apparently highly reminiscent of a UK based store still in existence today. Sketches also appear intermittently and add a bit of charm to the whole package. Oh, and as a nice tidbit for us book lovers – she gets assigned to the Book Floor and later to the Library! She’s surrounded by books. No one can blame her for eventually falling in love with her job and her newly found independence, right?!
“They were in baskets, in gaping parcels, in tottering piles on tables, each with a pinkish slip of paper sticking out, like a tired dog’s tongue.”
I loved reading about the interactions between Hilary and her coworkers and supervisors. Hilary has chosen to be here, but she is well aware that not all the women at Everyday’s have an option to run home to mom and dad or that gallant fiancé. She’s also recognized by the others as an outsider and scorned for her inexperience in the world of business. But Hilary is determined to make this work. She’s no pushover!
“The whole place is vile with intrigue and corner-conversations that stop when I come past. I thought this sort of atmosphere was only found in girls’ boarding schools. It seems to belong to business as well. I’d no idea what devils women could be to other women in an entirely passive way…”
The tone of the letters to home eventually shifts and the reader can see Hilary’s growth through her writing. I admire the way authors Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford achieved this. Epistolary novels can be hit or miss with me, but this was a smashing success. The ending felt a wee bit rushed, but that’s mainly because I wanted to chum around with Hilary a little longer. Maybe see if some of her fearlessness would rub off on me.
“I love you frightfully; but I want your companionship and tolerance and understanding even more than other things. I wonder if you see?”
August 3, 2021
A very entertaining blend of gentle comedy and social realism, this 1930s novel follows the fortunes of a young woman Hilary Fane. Hilary loses her Edinburgh job, just one example of cuts that left many working-age women desperate for employment in a faltering economy. Despite her overbearing fiancé’s objections, Hilary relocates to London and after a series of mishaps manages to get work in the book department of Everyman’s department store in Oxford Street – modelled on Selfridge’s. Hilary’s account of her city adventures, her eccentric colleagues and customers unfolds in the form of letters and memos accompanied by a series of evocative line drawings. After a slow start this turned out to be a really absorbing, well-told story - it wouldn’t seem out of place as a Persephone or Furrowed Middlebrow title - and it's presented in an accomplished, conversational style that reminded me of early Monica Dickens or E. M. Delafield.
April 17, 2021
I have no idea why I ordered this book. 🤨
I had just finished ‘Because of the Lockwoods’ by Dorothy Whipple and so woe is the book that follows that book, because nothing could compare to ‘Because of the Lockwoods’. I started to read this book, and it was, for me, sort of slow going. Or at least it was hard for me to get into it, and I looked at the number of pages, and it was late at night, and I thought that perhaps I would just donate it to The Free Library the next day. 😮
But I looked up what I paid for it and discovered I paid 17 bucks for it (😮) and so decided I would slog through it come hell or highwater. And that’ll show me—it turned out to be a 4-star book for me and quite enjoyable to read. 🙃
While I was reading it, I was thinking about what a jerk one of the protagonists was in the book (Basil), but then I could see what was going to happen to that person “between the lines” and I was correct in my assumption…which increased my satisfaction of the novel. Not because I was smug in that I was right but I did not like the fellow.
Clever structure to the book…a series of letters written by Hilary to either her fiancé or her parents about her work in a department store in London in the 1930s, “Everyman’s” (“a very thin disguise for Selfridges”). With occasional inter-office memos (they were facsimiles of memos so looked semi-authentic) thrown in for good effect. An epistolary novel.
I am intrigued by this publishing house and I think I will order more books from it: books featured in the back of this book were: ‘What Not: A Prophetic Comedy’ (Rose Macauley), ‘Save Me the Waltz’ (Zelda Fitzgerald), and ‘Blitz Writing & It was Different at a Time’ (Inez Holden). Here’s the Handheld Press link: https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/ They published one of my faves Elizabeth von Arnim books…The Caravaners! 😊
Notes:
• Very interesting…from the beginning of a Times Literary Supplement review (I could not read all of it because I am not a subscriber to the literary periodical (I used to be...it’s good…I had to stop getting it because I was drowning in literary periodicals): In her fascinating introduction to Business as Usual, the publisher Kate Macdonald details the writing careers of two remarkable women authors – Helen Rees (1903–70) and Anne Pedlar (1900–66) – who, under the pseudonyms Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, produced a staggering ninety-seven novels, both individually and together. And yet who has heard of them today? Jane Oliver in particular was best known for her meticulously researched historical novels, the royalties from which enabled her to set up the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys literary prize in 1942 in memory of her husband, which ran for almost seventy years until its demise in 2010. Business as Usual was the authors’ first joint fiction venture, based on their own experiences as single working women in London, and was an instant success when published in 1933, being reprinted within a month.
• Here is link to the prizewinners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ll...
Reviews (they all loved it! 😊 ):
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/business...
• https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
• https://fromfirstpagetolast.com/2020/...
I had just finished ‘Because of the Lockwoods’ by Dorothy Whipple and so woe is the book that follows that book, because nothing could compare to ‘Because of the Lockwoods’. I started to read this book, and it was, for me, sort of slow going. Or at least it was hard for me to get into it, and I looked at the number of pages, and it was late at night, and I thought that perhaps I would just donate it to The Free Library the next day. 😮
But I looked up what I paid for it and discovered I paid 17 bucks for it (😮) and so decided I would slog through it come hell or highwater. And that’ll show me—it turned out to be a 4-star book for me and quite enjoyable to read. 🙃
While I was reading it, I was thinking about what a jerk one of the protagonists was in the book (Basil), but then I could see what was going to happen to that person “between the lines” and I was correct in my assumption…which increased my satisfaction of the novel. Not because I was smug in that I was right but I did not like the fellow.
Clever structure to the book…a series of letters written by Hilary to either her fiancé or her parents about her work in a department store in London in the 1930s, “Everyman’s” (“a very thin disguise for Selfridges”). With occasional inter-office memos (they were facsimiles of memos so looked semi-authentic) thrown in for good effect. An epistolary novel.
I am intrigued by this publishing house and I think I will order more books from it: books featured in the back of this book were: ‘What Not: A Prophetic Comedy’ (Rose Macauley), ‘Save Me the Waltz’ (Zelda Fitzgerald), and ‘Blitz Writing & It was Different at a Time’ (Inez Holden). Here’s the Handheld Press link: https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/ They published one of my faves Elizabeth von Arnim books…The Caravaners! 😊
Notes:
• Very interesting…from the beginning of a Times Literary Supplement review (I could not read all of it because I am not a subscriber to the literary periodical (I used to be...it’s good…I had to stop getting it because I was drowning in literary periodicals): In her fascinating introduction to Business as Usual, the publisher Kate Macdonald details the writing careers of two remarkable women authors – Helen Rees (1903–70) and Anne Pedlar (1900–66) – who, under the pseudonyms Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, produced a staggering ninety-seven novels, both individually and together. And yet who has heard of them today? Jane Oliver in particular was best known for her meticulously researched historical novels, the royalties from which enabled her to set up the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys literary prize in 1942 in memory of her husband, which ran for almost seventy years until its demise in 2010. Business as Usual was the authors’ first joint fiction venture, based on their own experiences as single working women in London, and was an instant success when published in 1933, being reprinted within a month.
• Here is link to the prizewinners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ll...
Reviews (they all loved it! 😊 ):
• https://www.stuckinabook.com/business...
• https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
• https://fromfirstpagetolast.com/2020/...
February 18, 2019
Hooray for the Cornish Library Service!
I read about this book somewhere, when I looked it up I found there wasn’t a copy that I could buy; but luckily I thought to check the library catalogue, and I found that a wise librarian had kept this book in reserve stock.
I placed my order.
I received a little gem.
This is story of Hilary Fane, the daughter of well to do Edinburgh family. She is engaged to Basil, a doctor, but the demands of his career mean that they can’t marry for a year. Hilary decides that she doesn’t want to sit around waiting, that she has time to have an adventure, and do she sets off for London to try her hand at earning her own living.
Finding a job isn’t as easy as she thought it would be, because though she a university degree and a great many other accomplishments, employers seem to be looking for experience of a very different kind. Hilary is undaunted, she carries on her quest, eventually settling for a job behind the scenes at a large department store standing in for a lady with appendicitis rather than face another visit to the labour exchange.
The job is less than scintillating, copying labels for books to be mailed out to account customers, but Hilary enjoys being busy and doing something useful. She makes mistakes, but she learns quickly and in time she makes some diplomatic suggestions as to how things might be done a little better.
Hilary does just as well on the home front, renting room from a friendly landlady, budgeting to make sure that her salary covered all of her expenses, and enjoying her new lifestyle without losing her appreciation of the world she had come from.
She wrote to her fiance:
“‘Won’t it be fun when you can get a weekend off? I shall make you take me out and provide an expensive dinner followed by Turkish coffee and old brandy. Then we’ll dance, and afterwards I’ll bring you back to my basement and give you herring-roes personally cooked over a pennyworth of gas. When will you come? Soon please.'”
He didn’t come, but she continued to share all of the details of her life with him in lengthy letters. The whole of this story is told in letters, most of them to said fiance and some of them to her parents. She tended to tell them of her mistakes and problems; only mentioning them to him only when everything had been resolved.
There is also the occasional memo, when Hilary did something that the staff supervisor had to report to her manager. Luckily he saw the value of the point of view of an untypical member of staff and that helped her progress through the organisation.
When the lady she had been replacing returned to work, Hilary was promoted to the sales floor of the book department. She loved meeting people but she didn’t really like being on her feet all day and counting on her fingers got her into trouble. The lending library suited her much better, and she learned how to play workplace politics there.
Hilary’s increased salary allowed her to move to a flat of her own, and an elderly aunt – who had spotted her in the book department and carried her off to lunch; an event that she had needed all of her charm and wit to present to her supervisor as a positive thing – helped her to furnish it.
At first Hilary had struggled to balance her work and her life.
“The worst of earning one’s living is that it leaves so little time over to live in. During the winter you’ve got to hand over the eight daylight hours and only keep the twilight bits at each end. And most of them go to waste in sleep.”
Luckily, she got the hang of it in time; and when she bumped into an old school-friend who was also earning her own living, on her bus journey home, they started to make plans together and found that there was so much that they could do in London.
Hilary’s final promotion – becoming the assistant to the staff supervisor – gave her the role that suited her perfectly.
“It means getting back into the sort of organising work I really enjoy. Also, one comes into less physical contact with books and ink and labels and typewriters, which is so fortunate, considering how much I’m at the mercy of the inanimate ….
… I feel that I’m beginning to have an idea of the fabric of the business: it’s thrilling because everything’s woven into it; pots and pans and silks and carpets and wood and brass and sales books and typewriters and people’s lives.”
The story of this year in Hilary’s life is charming, and it is clear that its authors understood the workings of a big department store, and how it would strike a newcomer to that kind of world.
There are some nice modern touches – Hilary finds a book by Marie Stokes in the library, and she does her level best to help a young member of staff who is ‘in trouble’ and too scared to approach the staff supervisor – but not too many; this is a book very much of its time.
It is Hilary herself who makes that story sing. Her voice is wonderful. She is bright, she is witty and self-deprecating, and she is wonderfully interested in the people she meets and the world around her.
I was glad that while she was proud of managing on her weekly pay-packet, she realised that she was lucky to have choices and that life was often much more difficult to those who didn’t.
Her feelings and her progression – both at and away from work – were captured perfectly by her authors; and they were so very good at showing but not telling.
I can’t tell you a great deal about them, except that they -separately – wrote mainly historical novels, that Jane Oliver founded the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize in memory of her husband who died early in the Second World War, and that Ann Stafford provided some simple line drawings, credited to Hilary, for this book.
I suspect that this book is atypical, but I loved it enough to order another of Jane Oliver’s books that is tucked away in the Cornish Library Service’s reserve stock ….
I read about this book somewhere, when I looked it up I found there wasn’t a copy that I could buy; but luckily I thought to check the library catalogue, and I found that a wise librarian had kept this book in reserve stock.
I placed my order.
I received a little gem.
This is story of Hilary Fane, the daughter of well to do Edinburgh family. She is engaged to Basil, a doctor, but the demands of his career mean that they can’t marry for a year. Hilary decides that she doesn’t want to sit around waiting, that she has time to have an adventure, and do she sets off for London to try her hand at earning her own living.
Finding a job isn’t as easy as she thought it would be, because though she a university degree and a great many other accomplishments, employers seem to be looking for experience of a very different kind. Hilary is undaunted, she carries on her quest, eventually settling for a job behind the scenes at a large department store standing in for a lady with appendicitis rather than face another visit to the labour exchange.
The job is less than scintillating, copying labels for books to be mailed out to account customers, but Hilary enjoys being busy and doing something useful. She makes mistakes, but she learns quickly and in time she makes some diplomatic suggestions as to how things might be done a little better.
Hilary does just as well on the home front, renting room from a friendly landlady, budgeting to make sure that her salary covered all of her expenses, and enjoying her new lifestyle without losing her appreciation of the world she had come from.
She wrote to her fiance:
“‘Won’t it be fun when you can get a weekend off? I shall make you take me out and provide an expensive dinner followed by Turkish coffee and old brandy. Then we’ll dance, and afterwards I’ll bring you back to my basement and give you herring-roes personally cooked over a pennyworth of gas. When will you come? Soon please.'”
He didn’t come, but she continued to share all of the details of her life with him in lengthy letters. The whole of this story is told in letters, most of them to said fiance and some of them to her parents. She tended to tell them of her mistakes and problems; only mentioning them to him only when everything had been resolved.
There is also the occasional memo, when Hilary did something that the staff supervisor had to report to her manager. Luckily he saw the value of the point of view of an untypical member of staff and that helped her progress through the organisation.
When the lady she had been replacing returned to work, Hilary was promoted to the sales floor of the book department. She loved meeting people but she didn’t really like being on her feet all day and counting on her fingers got her into trouble. The lending library suited her much better, and she learned how to play workplace politics there.
Hilary’s increased salary allowed her to move to a flat of her own, and an elderly aunt – who had spotted her in the book department and carried her off to lunch; an event that she had needed all of her charm and wit to present to her supervisor as a positive thing – helped her to furnish it.
At first Hilary had struggled to balance her work and her life.
“The worst of earning one’s living is that it leaves so little time over to live in. During the winter you’ve got to hand over the eight daylight hours and only keep the twilight bits at each end. And most of them go to waste in sleep.”
Luckily, she got the hang of it in time; and when she bumped into an old school-friend who was also earning her own living, on her bus journey home, they started to make plans together and found that there was so much that they could do in London.
Hilary’s final promotion – becoming the assistant to the staff supervisor – gave her the role that suited her perfectly.
“It means getting back into the sort of organising work I really enjoy. Also, one comes into less physical contact with books and ink and labels and typewriters, which is so fortunate, considering how much I’m at the mercy of the inanimate ….
… I feel that I’m beginning to have an idea of the fabric of the business: it’s thrilling because everything’s woven into it; pots and pans and silks and carpets and wood and brass and sales books and typewriters and people’s lives.”
The story of this year in Hilary’s life is charming, and it is clear that its authors understood the workings of a big department store, and how it would strike a newcomer to that kind of world.
There are some nice modern touches – Hilary finds a book by Marie Stokes in the library, and she does her level best to help a young member of staff who is ‘in trouble’ and too scared to approach the staff supervisor – but not too many; this is a book very much of its time.
It is Hilary herself who makes that story sing. Her voice is wonderful. She is bright, she is witty and self-deprecating, and she is wonderfully interested in the people she meets and the world around her.
I was glad that while she was proud of managing on her weekly pay-packet, she realised that she was lucky to have choices and that life was often much more difficult to those who didn’t.
Her feelings and her progression – both at and away from work – were captured perfectly by her authors; and they were so very good at showing but not telling.
I can’t tell you a great deal about them, except that they -separately – wrote mainly historical novels, that Jane Oliver founded the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize in memory of her husband who died early in the Second World War, and that Ann Stafford provided some simple line drawings, credited to Hilary, for this book.
I suspect that this book is atypical, but I loved it enough to order another of Jane Oliver’s books that is tucked away in the Cornish Library Service’s reserve stock ….
February 17, 2021
4.5*
There is something about epistolary novels that I find irresistible and this little discovery from 1933 turned out to be a brilliant one - the perfect mix of historical details, entertainment and humour.
Hilary Vance, an Edinburgh girl, decides to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year while waiting for her wedding. Queue the charming and very funny accounts of her experience, first to find work in the capital, and then as a temporary clerk at Everyman’s Store (a thinly disguised Selfridge’s).
Hilary’s voice is appealing and infectious. Her observations of life in London and in the department store are fascinating, and often hilarious. Somehow she is able to show the wonders of discovering a new place, but also the very real and horrendous social conditions of the time, and experience some of it - although it is clear to the reader and indeed the heroine that she can return to the safety of the parental home at any time.
The narration, consisting of letters, telegrams, and memos, had a distinct visual quality to it. The illustrations made by Jane Oliver helped with this but I feel her style of sketching, using minimal strokes, was echoed in the writing too - quick brushstrokes made of words that revealed a whole picture. The result is that I couldn’t stop reading and finished this book in two sittings (last night and this morning), smiling to myself most of the time.
Somehow, I’ve been making parallels with another great book of the 1930s, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. The world they describe is the same, to a certain extent, but the heroines are in completely different situations. Hilary has always had the support of her family, which in turns has allowed her to be this courageous, funny, and confident woman. Miss Pettigrew on the other hand has never had that love or safety net, and the worry of survival has somewhat crushed her. And yet, both novels have that irresistible joie de vivre.
There is something about epistolary novels that I find irresistible and this little discovery from 1933 turned out to be a brilliant one - the perfect mix of historical details, entertainment and humour.
Hilary Vance, an Edinburgh girl, decides to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year while waiting for her wedding. Queue the charming and very funny accounts of her experience, first to find work in the capital, and then as a temporary clerk at Everyman’s Store (a thinly disguised Selfridge’s).
Hilary’s voice is appealing and infectious. Her observations of life in London and in the department store are fascinating, and often hilarious. Somehow she is able to show the wonders of discovering a new place, but also the very real and horrendous social conditions of the time, and experience some of it - although it is clear to the reader and indeed the heroine that she can return to the safety of the parental home at any time.
The narration, consisting of letters, telegrams, and memos, had a distinct visual quality to it. The illustrations made by Jane Oliver helped with this but I feel her style of sketching, using minimal strokes, was echoed in the writing too - quick brushstrokes made of words that revealed a whole picture. The result is that I couldn’t stop reading and finished this book in two sittings (last night and this morning), smiling to myself most of the time.
Somehow, I’ve been making parallels with another great book of the 1930s, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. The world they describe is the same, to a certain extent, but the heroines are in completely different situations. Hilary has always had the support of her family, which in turns has allowed her to be this courageous, funny, and confident woman. Miss Pettigrew on the other hand has never had that love or safety net, and the worry of survival has somewhat crushed her. And yet, both novels have that irresistible joie de vivre.
September 4, 2024
What a delight! I love Hilary’s voice so much. She has a sense of humor that I find particularly amusing. Her voice reminded me so much of the main characters in Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster. And I love how the whole plot is conveyed through letters and memos and telegrams, etc. It’s so fun to follow Hilary’s lark to move to London to work for a year before she is married and to see all the twists and turns it takes. I didn’t see the last bit of the book coming at all so now I need to re-read it and pick up on the clues earlier. I wish there was a sequel! Thank you Dominika for the encouragement to read this!
June 18, 2023
Hilary Fane is engaged to Basil, but he is on a work placement for a year, so rather than staying at home and being dependent on her family she opts for a year of independent living in London, eventually finding a job in Everymans book department. Told through letters written home to her fiance and her parents, and the occasional memo, we are taken along with Hilary for the year. She starts off as a lowly clerk, writing labels, but is soon noticed by on of the bosses and quickly rises through the ranks. Hilary is a fun, funny and empathetic character; she is fully aware that this is temporary for her, whereas many of her co-workers need the job to survive. She ends up being such an engaging character that made this entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable. I loved it and finished with a huge smile on my face.
June 17, 2020
Dedication: "TO THE PEOPLE WHO WORK FROM NINE TILL SIX"
I absolutely adored this book. I think I read the second half of it with a permanent smile on my face and at one point gave a silly sigh in response to a Private Not To Be Filed Office Correspondence. It truly is a gem and I found Jane Oliver's writing delightful. The wonderful writing combined with the clever illustrations by Ann Stafford, made this book a favorite.
It's no secret I love novels told in an epistolary format. This one is told through a series of letters, telegrams, and inter office correspondence. Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl, has graduated from university and been let go from her library position there due to staffing cuts in the early 1930's. She's engaged to Basil Rainford, a surgeon with a specialization in obstetrics. They plan on marrying in a year and Hilary decides to go to London and support herself for said year. Her loving parents and Basil aren't thrilled with this decision, but Hilary wants the thrill and adventure of a career and self reliance for a year. She fills a temporary clerk position while the incumbent is out with appendicitis. We, the readers, are treated to her accounting of her mishaps, learnings, and humorous observations as she rises in ranks rapidly at Everyman's Store. Her enthusiasm is infectious and I was eagerly reading each letter with interest following her progress. It becomes apparent, she is more fond and respectful of her fiancée than he is of her. We don't get to read Basil's letters in reply, however, Hilary's tone changes and it becomes apparent he's a critical, uncompromising individual who places his needs above all others. He is used to giving instructions and having them followed without question. Typical surgeon of the 1930's, I'd imagine.
One of the highlights of this novel for me was watching the evolution of Hilary. She starts out as a slightly silly girl on an adventure. Wisely noting in a letter home, she realizes how fortunate her position is. This is temporary and she has a family/fiancee at home to care for her in the event things don't work out. Other women are less fortunate (her observations of the charwomen rummaging in dustbins) and her coworkers who make less than she does and have no safety net. As she rises in ranks, we see her maturity blossom all the while keeping her sense of humor and kindness. There are hints of modernity in the situation she must handle where an employee has come to her for advice on what to do as she has gotten herself "in a trouble". Writing to Basil for help since this trouble lies in his realm of obstetrics, she is resoundingly chastised. Fortunately, she has found aid elsewhere and the cracks in their relationship widen. I loved watching her confidence and independence grow.
If you love epistolary novels, British shopgirl stories, clear descriptions of social conditions, poverty, and working class conditions in the 1930's/London- this is a novel for you. The description of department store life, not so covertly cloaked as Selfridges, is absolutely fascinating. Selfridges even sold this book in their signed bookshop in 1933. Learning about bookshop vs. lending library conditions was also deeply interesting as was Hilary's efforts to streamline and take away the stigma the poorer patrons experienced in Fiction C. This will be a reread and I'm so glad it popped up on my radar this year. I'm very interested to see what other offerings Handheld Press has as they reprinted this one just this year. A great choice!
I absolutely adored this book. I think I read the second half of it with a permanent smile on my face and at one point gave a silly sigh in response to a Private Not To Be Filed Office Correspondence. It truly is a gem and I found Jane Oliver's writing delightful. The wonderful writing combined with the clever illustrations by Ann Stafford, made this book a favorite.
It's no secret I love novels told in an epistolary format. This one is told through a series of letters, telegrams, and inter office correspondence. Hilary Fane, an Edinburgh girl, has graduated from university and been let go from her library position there due to staffing cuts in the early 1930's. She's engaged to Basil Rainford, a surgeon with a specialization in obstetrics. They plan on marrying in a year and Hilary decides to go to London and support herself for said year. Her loving parents and Basil aren't thrilled with this decision, but Hilary wants the thrill and adventure of a career and self reliance for a year. She fills a temporary clerk position while the incumbent is out with appendicitis. We, the readers, are treated to her accounting of her mishaps, learnings, and humorous observations as she rises in ranks rapidly at Everyman's Store. Her enthusiasm is infectious and I was eagerly reading each letter with interest following her progress. It becomes apparent, she is more fond and respectful of her fiancée than he is of her. We don't get to read Basil's letters in reply, however, Hilary's tone changes and it becomes apparent he's a critical, uncompromising individual who places his needs above all others. He is used to giving instructions and having them followed without question. Typical surgeon of the 1930's, I'd imagine.
One of the highlights of this novel for me was watching the evolution of Hilary. She starts out as a slightly silly girl on an adventure. Wisely noting in a letter home, she realizes how fortunate her position is. This is temporary and she has a family/fiancee at home to care for her in the event things don't work out. Other women are less fortunate (her observations of the charwomen rummaging in dustbins) and her coworkers who make less than she does and have no safety net. As she rises in ranks, we see her maturity blossom all the while keeping her sense of humor and kindness. There are hints of modernity in the situation she must handle where an employee has come to her for advice on what to do as she has gotten herself "in a trouble". Writing to Basil for help since this trouble lies in his realm of obstetrics, she is resoundingly chastised. Fortunately, she has found aid elsewhere and the cracks in their relationship widen. I loved watching her confidence and independence grow.
If you love epistolary novels, British shopgirl stories, clear descriptions of social conditions, poverty, and working class conditions in the 1930's/London- this is a novel for you. The description of department store life, not so covertly cloaked as Selfridges, is absolutely fascinating. Selfridges even sold this book in their signed bookshop in 1933. Learning about bookshop vs. lending library conditions was also deeply interesting as was Hilary's efforts to streamline and take away the stigma the poorer patrons experienced in Fiction C. This will be a reread and I'm so glad it popped up on my radar this year. I'm very interested to see what other offerings Handheld Press has as they reprinted this one just this year. A great choice!
March 30, 2020
This is such a charming book, a wonderful novel in which a young woman sets out on her own, hoping to find her way in the world of work before getting married. First published in 1933, the novel is being reissued by Handheld Press (publication date: 23rd March) in a beautiful new edition complete with drawings by Ann Stafford, the illustrator in the writing partnership of Oliver and Stafford.
The novel focuses on twenty-seven-year-old Hilary Fane, who has just become engaged to Basil Rainford, a busy surgeon based in Edinburgh. To support herself in the year before marriage, Hilary sets off to find a temporary job in London, something she hopes will be relatively easy given her degree-level education and experience as a librarian. However, the search for work proves challenging and time-consuming, more so that one might anticipate for someone with Hilary’s qualifications. (Several employers appear to be looking for a ‘Woman of Personality’, although it is never quite clear what this really means in practice!) In time though, persistence pays off, and Hilary is offered the role of a clerk at Everyman’s department store on Oxford Street – something she dare not turn down even if the work itself sounds rather dull and boring.
A clerk: it sounds dreary, but I daren’t refuse. It may lead to something, after all. (I wonder how many people get themselves landed for incredible years by that hope and by being too scared afterwards to throw up one job and look for another?) Anyway, I took it. I may have been a fool. I know there’s precious little prospect of advancement unless one’s head and shoulders better than the other people. But if I am, and if someone who matters notices it in time, I shall have my chance. (p. 23)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
The novel focuses on twenty-seven-year-old Hilary Fane, who has just become engaged to Basil Rainford, a busy surgeon based in Edinburgh. To support herself in the year before marriage, Hilary sets off to find a temporary job in London, something she hopes will be relatively easy given her degree-level education and experience as a librarian. However, the search for work proves challenging and time-consuming, more so that one might anticipate for someone with Hilary’s qualifications. (Several employers appear to be looking for a ‘Woman of Personality’, although it is never quite clear what this really means in practice!) In time though, persistence pays off, and Hilary is offered the role of a clerk at Everyman’s department store on Oxford Street – something she dare not turn down even if the work itself sounds rather dull and boring.
A clerk: it sounds dreary, but I daren’t refuse. It may lead to something, after all. (I wonder how many people get themselves landed for incredible years by that hope and by being too scared afterwards to throw up one job and look for another?) Anyway, I took it. I may have been a fool. I know there’s precious little prospect of advancement unless one’s head and shoulders better than the other people. But if I am, and if someone who matters notices it in time, I shall have my chance. (p. 23)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2020...
February 1, 2023
This book came on my radar a couple years ago when it was resissued by Handheld Press. Originally published in 1933, it's an epistolary novel about a young engaged woman named Hilary Fane who, striking out for a taste of independent self-supporting life in the year before her marriage, heads to London and gets a job in the administrative offices of a big department store. She writes mostly to her fiance, and to her family of course, and we're also treated to interdepartmental memos from and about her. It was lots of fun and a real charmer. I loved the amusing little line drawings.
Although I'd been interested in the book for a while, I held off on buying it online, and how glad I am I did. I would have missed out on the pure delight I felt last month at the Second Story Warehouse (in Rockville, MD) where I came upon a 1935 American edition of the book camouflaged on a neglected looking endcap shelf stuffed with Everyman Library editions and other older books. Perhaps it even ended up there because the store in the book is called "Everyman's" and if you flip through the book you see that word a lot? Anyway, the price: $4. Result: joy. It's a nice, sturdy, but comfortable looking copy too. The only drawback is the boards are a plain red without even a title, and I can't find an image of the 1935 American jacket online, so it'll have to stay image-less on my goodreads shelves, at least for now.
(Edited to add: I guess another drawback is that the reprint has an introduction that I'm sure I'd find interesting, but I still wouldn't trade the experience of my happy fortuitous find for that.)
In her year at the store, Hilary only briefly does any actual selling (she works on the bookfloor for a week until she's removed because she's bad at arithmetic and doodles on the sales slips), but surely the behind the scenes office stuff also warrants a place on this pet list of mine? https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
Although I'd been interested in the book for a while, I held off on buying it online, and how glad I am I did. I would have missed out on the pure delight I felt last month at the Second Story Warehouse (in Rockville, MD) where I came upon a 1935 American edition of the book camouflaged on a neglected looking endcap shelf stuffed with Everyman Library editions and other older books. Perhaps it even ended up there because the store in the book is called "Everyman's" and if you flip through the book you see that word a lot? Anyway, the price: $4. Result: joy. It's a nice, sturdy, but comfortable looking copy too. The only drawback is the boards are a plain red without even a title, and I can't find an image of the 1935 American jacket online, so it'll have to stay image-less on my goodreads shelves, at least for now.
(Edited to add: I guess another drawback is that the reprint has an introduction that I'm sure I'd find interesting, but I still wouldn't trade the experience of my happy fortuitous find for that.)
In her year at the store, Hilary only briefly does any actual selling (she works on the bookfloor for a week until she's removed because she's bad at arithmetic and doodles on the sales slips), but surely the behind the scenes office stuff also warrants a place on this pet list of mine? https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
September 19, 2023
Business as Usual is a delightful fast read, quite perfect of its type; I only knocked off a star for its lack of ambition.
It’s 1931, and a young Scotswoman, Hilary Fane, is engaged to a doctor but they can’t marry for a year. Rather than hang on her parents during her engagement, she decides to go to London and seek employment. It’s the middle of an economic crisis, of course, but she finds rather quickly a tedious clerical job at a large department store called Everyman’s (basically, Selfridges). She has few skills but is bright and well educated, so she is rapidly promoted, especially after an up-and-coming young executive spots her potential.
The story is told through Hilary’s letters home, both to her parents and to her fiancé. She is spunky and witty and adds charming line drawings to her letters. Periodically the letters are varied with inter-office memos and other forms of communication. It’s a clever storytelling format that allows Hilary to reveal herself and the reader to see more than she conveys. By the time we are more than ready for this twist to happen.
Along the way we get a fascinating glimpse into the life of the working women of London in the 1930s. The war left England with many more women than men and a shaky economy, and the consequences of that upheaval are poignantly clear despite the perky tone of the text. Hilary is a gallant narrator who takes life as it comes and doesn’t allow herself to be defeated by it (though it helps that she has a secure middle-class existence to fall back on if she really comes a-cropper, as she herself admits).
I especially appreciated the high quality of the paperback edition, with good paper and type, nice margins, and the original line drawings reproduced—a rarity among reprinted editions of the popular fiction of this era.
The turn of events at the end, while welcome, happens rather too swiftly; it feels as if the authors simply felt they’d tried hard enough. But this is a minor quibble with what was a very diverting and pleasurable day of reading.
It’s 1931, and a young Scotswoman, Hilary Fane, is engaged to a doctor but they can’t marry for a year. Rather than hang on her parents during her engagement, she decides to go to London and seek employment. It’s the middle of an economic crisis, of course, but she finds rather quickly a tedious clerical job at a large department store called Everyman’s (basically, Selfridges). She has few skills but is bright and well educated, so she is rapidly promoted, especially after an up-and-coming young executive spots her potential.
The story is told through Hilary’s letters home, both to her parents and to her fiancé. She is spunky and witty and adds charming line drawings to her letters. Periodically the letters are varied with inter-office memos and other forms of communication. It’s a clever storytelling format that allows Hilary to reveal herself and the reader to see more than she conveys. By the time we are more than ready for this twist to happen.
Along the way we get a fascinating glimpse into the life of the working women of London in the 1930s. The war left England with many more women than men and a shaky economy, and the consequences of that upheaval are poignantly clear despite the perky tone of the text. Hilary is a gallant narrator who takes life as it comes and doesn’t allow herself to be defeated by it (though it helps that she has a secure middle-class existence to fall back on if she really comes a-cropper, as she herself admits).
I especially appreciated the high quality of the paperback edition, with good paper and type, nice margins, and the original line drawings reproduced—a rarity among reprinted editions of the popular fiction of this era.
The turn of events at the end, while welcome, happens rather too swiftly; it feels as if the authors simply felt they’d tried hard enough. But this is a minor quibble with what was a very diverting and pleasurable day of reading.
August 11, 2021
4.5
La historia transcurre entre el otoño de 1931 y la primavera de 1933 y se construye a través de cartas, informes y memorandos. la mayor parte de las cartas van dirigidas a su prometido y una pequeña porción a su familia. De estas cartas no vemos la respuesta pero por la reacción de Hilary podemos intuirla y hacernos una idea de cómo es la gente que dejó en Edimburgo. Los correos internos de la empresa si tienen respuesta en incluso algunos se intercambian entre terceros personajes. A través de todos estos escritos, especialmente de las entusiastas cartas de Hilary a los suyos podemos ver un fiel retrato del Londres de finales de los años 1920 y principios de los 1930: la vida cotidiana de la gente con la que se cruza, el carácter de los compañeros de trabajo, la situación laboral de la mujer, las ideas de la sociedad sobre salir a trabajar o ser ama de casa, los odios, afectos y manías dentro de la empresa, las relaciones de poder…
El tomo generalmente entusiasta y como de descubrimiento en los escritos que Hilary (y por tanto de la autora) imprime en sus cartas es de jovialidad y buen carácter, lo que hace del libro una delicia y una lectura perfecta para el verano aunque, curiosamente, el verano es la única estación del año que no se representa en este libro. Dicho esto, la vida no son siempre risas y alegría y Hilary no es la excepción: encontrará reveses, enemistades y contratiempos que algunas veces superará y otras no, pero nunca pierde la esperanza y eso es lo que hace del libro un comfort-read en la línea de “48 Charing Cross Road” o “La sociedad literaria y el pastel de piel de patata de Guernsey”.
La historia transcurre entre el otoño de 1931 y la primavera de 1933 y se construye a través de cartas, informes y memorandos. la mayor parte de las cartas van dirigidas a su prometido y una pequeña porción a su familia. De estas cartas no vemos la respuesta pero por la reacción de Hilary podemos intuirla y hacernos una idea de cómo es la gente que dejó en Edimburgo. Los correos internos de la empresa si tienen respuesta en incluso algunos se intercambian entre terceros personajes. A través de todos estos escritos, especialmente de las entusiastas cartas de Hilary a los suyos podemos ver un fiel retrato del Londres de finales de los años 1920 y principios de los 1930: la vida cotidiana de la gente con la que se cruza, el carácter de los compañeros de trabajo, la situación laboral de la mujer, las ideas de la sociedad sobre salir a trabajar o ser ama de casa, los odios, afectos y manías dentro de la empresa, las relaciones de poder…
El tomo generalmente entusiasta y como de descubrimiento en los escritos que Hilary (y por tanto de la autora) imprime en sus cartas es de jovialidad y buen carácter, lo que hace del libro una delicia y una lectura perfecta para el verano aunque, curiosamente, el verano es la única estación del año que no se representa en este libro. Dicho esto, la vida no son siempre risas y alegría y Hilary no es la excepción: encontrará reveses, enemistades y contratiempos que algunas veces superará y otras no, pero nunca pierde la esperanza y eso es lo que hace del libro un comfort-read en la línea de “48 Charing Cross Road” o “La sociedad literaria y el pastel de piel de patata de Guernsey”.
September 8, 2021
A brilliant illustrated book in letter format that give you a wonderful glimpse into the working life of a woman in the 1930's in London.
Gritty, comedic, romantic it's all there!
A wonderful social history and as you can tell a wonderful book.
Gritty, comedic, romantic it's all there!
A wonderful social history and as you can tell a wonderful book.
July 25, 2023
What a charming gem.
Funny, lovely, interesting adventure of a young woman who decided to take a job and moves to London (from Scotland) for a year.
All in letters.
The world of London's life in the 30ties of the XX century from the perspective of a young working woman - priceless. The wit and sketches made it even more enjoyable.
[4-4.5 stars]
Funny, lovely, interesting adventure of a young woman who decided to take a job and moves to London (from Scotland) for a year.
All in letters.
The world of London's life in the 30ties of the XX century from the perspective of a young working woman - priceless. The wit and sketches made it even more enjoyable.
[4-4.5 stars]
July 1, 2023
4.5 stars for this novel in letters from the early 1930s. It was a candidate in the Retro Reads Book Pool for 2023, which is how I discovered it. And I am so glad I found it. What a delight!
Our letter writer is 27 year old Hilary Fane. She's an Oxford grad, former teacher, who has just been laid off from her librarian's job. She's also newly engaged to Basil (whose letters we never see, just her reaction to them.) Basil is a surgeon, whose busy schedule necessitates that they not marry for a year. So Hilary heads to London from her home in Edinburgh, to seek work. She wants to keep herself busy, plus earn her own money, while waiting for her wedding day. Let us just say that Basil is not keen on the idea.
Her letters are full of her job search, and then her job at Everyman's Stores (think Selfridge's). Full of good humor (and illustrated by marvelous little sketches of various co-workers and customers), the letters give us a nice slice of London life in 1931. We experience Hilary's highs and lows as she pours out her experiences to Basil and her parents: her frustrations with her first position. her pride in being promoted, her interactions with her various co-workers. The dramas and comedies are small but entertaining nonetheless. I was cheering for Hilary all the way through the book.
And the ending is perfect.
I first read this in the 1934 US edition. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a 'keeper' copy
!
Our letter writer is 27 year old Hilary Fane. She's an Oxford grad, former teacher, who has just been laid off from her librarian's job. She's also newly engaged to Basil (whose letters we never see, just her reaction to them.) Basil is a surgeon, whose busy schedule necessitates that they not marry for a year. So Hilary heads to London from her home in Edinburgh, to seek work. She wants to keep herself busy, plus earn her own money, while waiting for her wedding day. Let us just say that Basil is not keen on the idea.
Her letters are full of her job search, and then her job at Everyman's Stores (think Selfridge's). Full of good humor (and illustrated by marvelous little sketches of various co-workers and customers), the letters give us a nice slice of London life in 1931. We experience Hilary's highs and lows as she pours out her experiences to Basil and her parents: her frustrations with her first position. her pride in being promoted, her interactions with her various co-workers. The dramas and comedies are small but entertaining nonetheless. I was cheering for Hilary all the way through the book.
And the ending is perfect.
I first read this in the 1934 US edition. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a 'keeper' copy
!
May 24, 2020
This epistolary novel - if you can include office memos as letters - offers a glimpse into life as a low paid clerical drudge in the early 1930s. The narrator is an Oxford educated upper middle class girl with a wealthy aunt but admits she is a poor relation, and commendably doesn't try to sponge off her affluent relatives. Given that her father is an academic, I'm not sure that the family could be so poor that they can't afford to maintain her at home in the year before she is due to marry, nor that there are no drudge jobs in Edinburgh which she could not easily find while living at home. However she is determined to be independent for a year before she marries, even in the teeth of the stern opposition of her obnoxious fiance, and travels to London.
The job she finds is described as tedious, and the description of how the business works and the petty politics of the office hierarchy are a little too close to grim reality to be funny. But the account certainly rings true. Her cheap basement lodgings are also an indication of her lowly status, nasty and uncomfortable as they sound, though she does literally go up in the world when she is promoted to a more responsible, better paid job and moves to an upstairs flat in Chelsea.
The narrator is at least honest about her situation. She is not a good or accurate clerk as she can't type and mental arithmetic is beyond her. She is promoted for her social skills in dealing with a truculent customer and then uses her organisational skills, which might have lain dormant in any other employee not noticed by the boss, to move up the corporate ladder (she seems to move up at dizzying speed in six months, and this rise is not lost on many jealous colleagues). She writes to the joyless Basil:
I suppose it's not a fair test of this sort of life, either. I can always run away. They - the other people with basements and nine-to-six and two pounds ten a week - can't.
Hilary is a bright and sociable girl, and her wit and humour shine even when she is dealing with complaints by customers or recalcitrant co-workers. Her social connections to her wealthy aunt and her cheerful personality eventually pay dividends to bring her lasting happiness.
The job she finds is described as tedious, and the description of how the business works and the petty politics of the office hierarchy are a little too close to grim reality to be funny. But the account certainly rings true. Her cheap basement lodgings are also an indication of her lowly status, nasty and uncomfortable as they sound, though she does literally go up in the world when she is promoted to a more responsible, better paid job and moves to an upstairs flat in Chelsea.
The narrator is at least honest about her situation. She is not a good or accurate clerk as she can't type and mental arithmetic is beyond her. She is promoted for her social skills in dealing with a truculent customer and then uses her organisational skills, which might have lain dormant in any other employee not noticed by the boss, to move up the corporate ladder (she seems to move up at dizzying speed in six months, and this rise is not lost on many jealous colleagues). She writes to the joyless Basil:
I suppose it's not a fair test of this sort of life, either. I can always run away. They - the other people with basements and nine-to-six and two pounds ten a week - can't.
Hilary is a bright and sociable girl, and her wit and humour shine even when she is dealing with complaints by customers or recalcitrant co-workers. Her social connections to her wealthy aunt and her cheerful personality eventually pay dividends to bring her lasting happiness.
Read
June 25, 2020A short, delightful epistolary novel that came out early in the thirties. Turns out the two authors wrote a hundred books between them, and were immensely popular as collaborators and on their own. I mean to look up more of their work.
Hilary Fane has decided to spend the year of her engagement to Basil in London, living on her own. Which means finding a job. The novel is about her adventures at "Everyman's" which is a sort of bookstore-lending library-department store. Hilary is a bit hapless at first. She makes mistakes, and she never does learn to cope with adding up bills correctly, or typing well. But she has other strengths, as seen by one of the higher-ups . . . meanwhile we slowly discover what sort of a person Basil is.
Hilary is warm-hearted, and vastly interested in her fellow-human, though she deprecates the live of a wage slave. And this is a novel of its time--she's upper class, so she can escape anytime she wants to go home, and she attracts an upper class hero. She also smokes Turkish cigarettes for relaxation, which made me shudder.
But for all that the novel is a delight, with vivid turns of phrase, such as 'a rattish scurry of clerks' and so on.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Hilary Fane has decided to spend the year of her engagement to Basil in London, living on her own. Which means finding a job. The novel is about her adventures at "Everyman's" which is a sort of bookstore-lending library-department store. Hilary is a bit hapless at first. She makes mistakes, and she never does learn to cope with adding up bills correctly, or typing well. But she has other strengths, as seen by one of the higher-ups . . . meanwhile we slowly discover what sort of a person Basil is.
Hilary is warm-hearted, and vastly interested in her fellow-human, though she deprecates the live of a wage slave. And this is a novel of its time--she's upper class, so she can escape anytime she wants to go home, and she attracts an upper class hero. She also smokes Turkish cigarettes for relaxation, which made me shudder.
But for all that the novel is a delight, with vivid turns of phrase, such as 'a rattish scurry of clerks' and so on.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
April 29, 2021
I had wanted to get my hands on a copy of Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford since its reissue by Handheld Press. At a time when bookshops were closed during the long lockdown at the outset of 2021, and I was trying my utmost not to purchase anything online to add to my TBR, my library very kindly purchased a copy on my behalf, and I was the first to read it. Business as Usual was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and I am thrilled to impart that it lived up to my high expectations.
Published in 1933, Business as Usual is a 'delightful illustrated novel in letters'. Its protagonist is twenty seven-year-old Edinburgh woman named Hilary Fane, who has a degree from the University of Oxford, and was recently employed as a teacher at a girls' school outside Glasgow. Newly engaged, she insists on achieving her dream of moving to London for a year before her marriage, and is 'determined to support herself by her own earnings'. Despite the 'resentment of her surgeon fiancé', she makes her way to the capital, finding a room in a boarding house - named the Minerva Hotel, the many notices pasted around her bedroom have a 'cumulative effect [which] is shattering' - and spending much of her time searching for a job.
Hilary's first foray into employment in the capital is as a typist at a London department store named Everyman's on Oxford Street - 'a very thin disguise for Selfridges'. Through 'luck and an inability to type well', she is transferred first to the book department - where she is initially refused employment because she is 'too tall' - and then into the library. She loves the environment in which she finds herself, and receives a rapid promotion. We learn about her, and her new London life, through a series of letters, which she writes to both her parents and her fiancé, Basil. Other elements have been included when an overview is needed, such as memos between senior colleagues of Hilary's, and a letter from her mother to her sister-in-law; here, she writes: 'They're not to be married for a year. I don't approve of long engagements, but in this case Basil's work makes one necessary, and Hilary is determined not to spend the time at home doing nothing.'
Almost as soon as she moves to London, Hilary meets some wonderfully eccentric characters, including an aunt of hers, who insists on taking her out for long lunches despite the fact that Hilary should be working. Her second interview before securing employment is, for example, 'with a purveyor of Psycho-therapy. He had a perfectly normal (female) secretary, so that I wasn't prepared to find him in a Biblical bath-robe, contemplating eternity in front of a Grecian vase with one lovely flower in it. I can't think what my duties would have been, but the word "salary" shocked him...'.
From the first, Hilary is a highly positive young woman; she comments: 'Almost any interesting job would do for a year. At about four pounds a week, I thought. After all, I'm not preparing to make a life's work of it.' I loved her enduring eagerness, and the way in which she presented herself. When she begins work at Everyman's, and she is describing her new morning routine to Basil, she writes: 'Half-way along the Lane I usually begin to run, hypnotised by that clock over the Staff Entrance. After that come the million stairs to the Cloakroom (Women Staff) so that I inevitably arrive on the Book Floor without a breath in my body.'
Business as Usual was the first joint literary venture between Helen Rees and Anne Pedler - the real names of Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford respectively - and I very much hope that it isn't too difficult to find other books which they worked on together. There are almost one hundred of them, published either jointly or separately by Rees and Pedler, after all. I must admit that I will be avoiding their many Mills and Boon publications, though!
Notes on the novel have been provided by Handheld Press' director, Kate Macdonald, herself a social historian. She writes that Rees and Pedler, who founded the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for young Commonwealth authors, 'recreate with relish the working lives of single women in 1930s London, and the struggle to find work that was interesting, amenable and paid enough to live on.' Of the structure of Business as Usual, she comments: 'The letters are actively enhanced rather than merely illustrated by Ann Stafford's line drawings, and by the original layout (reproduced in this edition) that simulates telegrams, in-house memoranda and private letters.'
Business as Usual is marvellously amusing, and quite charming. It is exactly the kind of book I enjoy - rooted so well in its historical and social context, but with a highly realistic protagonist, and infused with a great deal of warmth and humour. I thoroughly enjoyed this lively, and lovely, novel. I loved its tongue-in-cheek asides, and its memorable characters. Business as Usual would not be out of place on the Virago or Persephone lists, and surely holds a great deal of appeal for their readers.
Published in 1933, Business as Usual is a 'delightful illustrated novel in letters'. Its protagonist is twenty seven-year-old Edinburgh woman named Hilary Fane, who has a degree from the University of Oxford, and was recently employed as a teacher at a girls' school outside Glasgow. Newly engaged, she insists on achieving her dream of moving to London for a year before her marriage, and is 'determined to support herself by her own earnings'. Despite the 'resentment of her surgeon fiancé', she makes her way to the capital, finding a room in a boarding house - named the Minerva Hotel, the many notices pasted around her bedroom have a 'cumulative effect [which] is shattering' - and spending much of her time searching for a job.
Hilary's first foray into employment in the capital is as a typist at a London department store named Everyman's on Oxford Street - 'a very thin disguise for Selfridges'. Through 'luck and an inability to type well', she is transferred first to the book department - where she is initially refused employment because she is 'too tall' - and then into the library. She loves the environment in which she finds herself, and receives a rapid promotion. We learn about her, and her new London life, through a series of letters, which she writes to both her parents and her fiancé, Basil. Other elements have been included when an overview is needed, such as memos between senior colleagues of Hilary's, and a letter from her mother to her sister-in-law; here, she writes: 'They're not to be married for a year. I don't approve of long engagements, but in this case Basil's work makes one necessary, and Hilary is determined not to spend the time at home doing nothing.'
Almost as soon as she moves to London, Hilary meets some wonderfully eccentric characters, including an aunt of hers, who insists on taking her out for long lunches despite the fact that Hilary should be working. Her second interview before securing employment is, for example, 'with a purveyor of Psycho-therapy. He had a perfectly normal (female) secretary, so that I wasn't prepared to find him in a Biblical bath-robe, contemplating eternity in front of a Grecian vase with one lovely flower in it. I can't think what my duties would have been, but the word "salary" shocked him...'.
From the first, Hilary is a highly positive young woman; she comments: 'Almost any interesting job would do for a year. At about four pounds a week, I thought. After all, I'm not preparing to make a life's work of it.' I loved her enduring eagerness, and the way in which she presented herself. When she begins work at Everyman's, and she is describing her new morning routine to Basil, she writes: 'Half-way along the Lane I usually begin to run, hypnotised by that clock over the Staff Entrance. After that come the million stairs to the Cloakroom (Women Staff) so that I inevitably arrive on the Book Floor without a breath in my body.'
Business as Usual was the first joint literary venture between Helen Rees and Anne Pedler - the real names of Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford respectively - and I very much hope that it isn't too difficult to find other books which they worked on together. There are almost one hundred of them, published either jointly or separately by Rees and Pedler, after all. I must admit that I will be avoiding their many Mills and Boon publications, though!
Notes on the novel have been provided by Handheld Press' director, Kate Macdonald, herself a social historian. She writes that Rees and Pedler, who founded the John Llewellyn Rhys prize for young Commonwealth authors, 'recreate with relish the working lives of single women in 1930s London, and the struggle to find work that was interesting, amenable and paid enough to live on.' Of the structure of Business as Usual, she comments: 'The letters are actively enhanced rather than merely illustrated by Ann Stafford's line drawings, and by the original layout (reproduced in this edition) that simulates telegrams, in-house memoranda and private letters.'
Business as Usual is marvellously amusing, and quite charming. It is exactly the kind of book I enjoy - rooted so well in its historical and social context, but with a highly realistic protagonist, and infused with a great deal of warmth and humour. I thoroughly enjoyed this lively, and lovely, novel. I loved its tongue-in-cheek asides, and its memorable characters. Business as Usual would not be out of place on the Virago or Persephone lists, and surely holds a great deal of appeal for their readers.
Read
October 8, 2021A quaint and gentle epistolary tale set in the 1930s of a young woman moving to London to take up a job at a fictionalised version of Selfridges. I’d describe this book as an innocent story of manners and finding how one fits in in the workplace, with some of the issues the protagonist faces harking back to a more simple time. I don’t feel like I was fully in the mood for this when I picked it up but it was still a largely enjoyable (if slightly fluffy) read.
August 17, 2023
I don’t usually read epistolary novels since we are seeing the characters at a distance, but this one was so clever and funny that I felt as if I knew the protaganist quite well. A well-born plucky young woman decides to spend one year working for a salary, just to see if she is capable of earning her own living, before she marries and settles down in a life of wealth and privilege. We learn about her experiences through her letters to her family and fiancé. Not only are her letters wickedly humorous, we find out a lot about the inner workings of a large London department store in the 1930s.
April 16, 2023
Thoroughly enjoyable! Grateful to friend reviews here on GoodReads for alerting me to this (Emily! Alisha! Thank you!) I've no time to write a review just now but wanted to post a smiling four stars and you can check out their reviews as my sentiments are similar :-)
December 8, 2020
An enjoyable epistolary novel about a woman who decides, against her fiance's wishes, to work for a year in London. Her experiences working in a large department store are interesting anthropology of the time, but also universally relatable. A lot of fun.
September 2, 2023
An utterly delightful and charming epistolary novel! It was obvious from early on where the story would go but the ride was so laugh out loud fun that I thoroughly enjoyed myself nonetheless. I highly recommend!
July 5, 2021
Business As Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford was first published in 1933. It’s an epistolary novel with the story told by means of telegrams and memoranda, as well as letters from Hilary to her family and to her fiancé Basil. As in the original, this Handheld Classics edition is enlivened by occasional line drawings of characters and events featured in the book, the work of Ann Stafford. Kate Macdonald’s fascinating introduction also provides background information on the development of lending libraries as part of the services offered by stores like Everyman’s. There’s also a useful glossary.
Just like those to whom the book is dedicated – ‘The People Who Work From Nine Till Six’ – Hilary Fane works long hours, first in the book department of Everyman’s department store and then in its lending library. It’s a life of repetitive work, solitary lunches, weighing up how to spend every shilling, travelling to and from work on crowded buses, as well as the surreptitious washing of stockings (forbidden by her hostel’s rules).
Despite this, Hilary is a prolific letter writer especially to Basil, who works as a surgeon back in her home city of Edinburgh while she is seeking a career and independence in London. Interestingly, the reader never sees Basil’s replies to Hilary’s letters, only her responses to those replies. I have to say that pretty early on I developed a rather poor impression of Basil as Hilary seems to miss him a lot more than he does her. In one letter she writes rather touchingly, “I wish I had you here. It’s such a waste being happy alone. Happiness won’t hoard either. It isn’t the least use trying to keep it for the next black mood. It won’t even keep overnight.” I was not entirely disappointed, or surprised, by the later turn of events.
The book subtly reveals the class distinctions of the time. For example, as Hilary observes when she is given responsibility for the ‘Fiction C’ section of the lending library, “The best people don’t have Fiction C subscriptions, because they only cost 10/- a year and provide the copies that other people have spilt tea over or dropped in the bath”. This also gives you a sense of the humour that runs through the book such as the scene in which Hilary’s Aunt Bertha makes an unexpected visit to the library or when Hilary is called upon to investigate the case of the rabbit pie. Later, given the task of suggesting improvements to the library’s exceedingly complex processes which are jealously guarded by its longer serving members of staff, Hilary’s findings demonstrate there is little ‘rational’ about Everyman’s Rational Reader Services. (Hilary’s letters and memos featuring the occasional use of capital letters to stress important points, such as an ‘Immense Concession’ or a ‘Momentous Step’, put me in mind of Dear Mrs. Bird by A J Pearce.)
Business as Usual is a little gem of a book that is not only a delightfully entertaining read but provides an insight into a particular period of time and facet of everyday life. And anyway, who can resist a book set in a bookshop or library? Not this reader, certainly.
Just like those to whom the book is dedicated – ‘The People Who Work From Nine Till Six’ – Hilary Fane works long hours, first in the book department of Everyman’s department store and then in its lending library. It’s a life of repetitive work, solitary lunches, weighing up how to spend every shilling, travelling to and from work on crowded buses, as well as the surreptitious washing of stockings (forbidden by her hostel’s rules).
Despite this, Hilary is a prolific letter writer especially to Basil, who works as a surgeon back in her home city of Edinburgh while she is seeking a career and independence in London. Interestingly, the reader never sees Basil’s replies to Hilary’s letters, only her responses to those replies. I have to say that pretty early on I developed a rather poor impression of Basil as Hilary seems to miss him a lot more than he does her. In one letter she writes rather touchingly, “I wish I had you here. It’s such a waste being happy alone. Happiness won’t hoard either. It isn’t the least use trying to keep it for the next black mood. It won’t even keep overnight.” I was not entirely disappointed, or surprised, by the later turn of events.
The book subtly reveals the class distinctions of the time. For example, as Hilary observes when she is given responsibility for the ‘Fiction C’ section of the lending library, “The best people don’t have Fiction C subscriptions, because they only cost 10/- a year and provide the copies that other people have spilt tea over or dropped in the bath”. This also gives you a sense of the humour that runs through the book such as the scene in which Hilary’s Aunt Bertha makes an unexpected visit to the library or when Hilary is called upon to investigate the case of the rabbit pie. Later, given the task of suggesting improvements to the library’s exceedingly complex processes which are jealously guarded by its longer serving members of staff, Hilary’s findings demonstrate there is little ‘rational’ about Everyman’s Rational Reader Services. (Hilary’s letters and memos featuring the occasional use of capital letters to stress important points, such as an ‘Immense Concession’ or a ‘Momentous Step’, put me in mind of Dear Mrs. Bird by A J Pearce.)
Business as Usual is a little gem of a book that is not only a delightfully entertaining read but provides an insight into a particular period of time and facet of everyday life. And anyway, who can resist a book set in a bookshop or library? Not this reader, certainly.
July 7, 2020
The story is charming, but that is not even the biggest draw of this book. It is the very specific world of the library circulation systems of bookstores prevalent in the 30s, lain bare to us with details of the administrative and menial responsibilities necessary to run such an establishment.
The book, being a short one, is surprising in the number of topics it juggles. Careers for women, class consciousness and advantages, the value of an Oxbridge degree for women, the minutiae of running a business which is not even in existence anymore, the lives of working class women, and why success is a mix of talent and networking.
And it is told by the brilliant, non-cloying voice of an optimistic (which wanes) woman with a sense of humour (which remains intact), simply trying to carve her own identity. She does not ignore the social realities of the world, but is practical enough to understand her own advantages because of the circumstances of her birth. Most books of this era have women aspiring to be writers, which makes it even more delightful that our main character decides to go into business (as a shop girl!) and lets her talents and luck steer her forward. A refreshing change, and even the very obvious ending does not take away the joy of following this journey.
The book, being a short one, is surprising in the number of topics it juggles. Careers for women, class consciousness and advantages, the value of an Oxbridge degree for women, the minutiae of running a business which is not even in existence anymore, the lives of working class women, and why success is a mix of talent and networking.
And it is told by the brilliant, non-cloying voice of an optimistic (which wanes) woman with a sense of humour (which remains intact), simply trying to carve her own identity. She does not ignore the social realities of the world, but is practical enough to understand her own advantages because of the circumstances of her birth. Most books of this era have women aspiring to be writers, which makes it even more delightful that our main character decides to go into business (as a shop girl!) and lets her talents and luck steer her forward. A refreshing change, and even the very obvious ending does not take away the joy of following this journey.
January 28, 2021
Such an enjoyable read composed entirely of fictional letters and memos and where I learned of a real library system back in the day that included a ‘Fiction C’ category for those who could only afford the ‘oldest stock which would have been in circulation for some time and the books would have looked well-read.’
The authors, pen names for Helen Christina Eason Rees and Anne Isabel Stafford Pedler, in themselves lived an intriguing life that reads in the introduction as a book on its own and makes me want to delve more deeply.
The authors, pen names for Helen Christina Eason Rees and Anne Isabel Stafford Pedler, in themselves lived an intriguing life that reads in the introduction as a book on its own and makes me want to delve more deeply.
June 18, 2022
Told entirely in letters and memorandums, this is a cute, fast read about a woman who decides to spend the year before she gets married supporting herself by means of a job in London. So it's mostly about her discovering what it's like to climb the corporate ladder, make ends meet, etc., and a change of heart about her fiancé that can be seen a mile away.
The interdepartmental memos are used to good effect as you start to get the sense that someone else is paying attention to the funny, competent new girl in the shop.
The interdepartmental memos are used to good effect as you start to get the sense that someone else is paying attention to the funny, competent new girl in the shop.
January 8, 2021
This was delightful. An epistolary novel about a young woman who decides to work as a shopgirl in London in the 1930’s for a year. Warm, humorous, and full of life. I loved every minute of it. And the line drawings really add to the prose. A new author to me but I intend to seek out her other books.
January 3, 2023
Light and humorous epistolary novel about one woman's career in a London department store circa 1931.
June 30, 2024
I so enjoyed this detailed picture of a working girl's life in the 1930s. Delightfully witty writing too.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews