The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym

by Paula Byrne

A brilliant, intimate biography of English writer Barbara Pym.

She was Pym to friends. Miss Pym in her diaries. Sandra in seduction mode. Pymska at her most sophisticated.
English novelist Barbara Pym’s career was defined, in many senses, by rejection. Her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was turned down by every publisher she sent it out in 1935, finally published only fifteen years later. Though she picked up a publisher from there and received modest praise, the publishing industry grew restless and her sales spiralled downwards. By her seventh novel she had been dropped. She was deemed old-fashioned, telling stories of little English villages, unrequited love and the social dramas of vicars or academics.

This brilliant biography, brimming with Pym’s private diaries and intimate letters, offers a first full insight into Barbara Pym’s life and how it informed her writing. It gallops through her love affairs and lifelong relationships. It opens a door to the quick-draw humour which lives in her every written line. It shows how, with a little help from her most ardent fans and friends including Philip Larkin, her work eventually resurfaced, meeting new readers and bringing her sudden astounding, resounding love and acclaim – in the last years of her life.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Books About Books, Memoir, Audiobook, British Literature

686 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2021

About the author

Paula Byrne is a British author and biographer. She is married to writer Jonathan Bate, the Shakespeare scholar.

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I received this book, I felt somewhat sceptical. Did I really want to read six hundred pages on the life of someone whom I suspected had not had a particularly noteworthy life? I like biographies, but I mostly pick personalities such as Peter the Great, Erasmus, Louis XIV, Bernini and the like.

But this biography soon caught my interest and became a page turner. Very fluidly written, it becomes a perfect parallel to Pym’s works – the attraction is in the ordinary but which through acute observation it becomes extraordinary.

These “Adventures” provide the testimony of an average person who turned out not to be average. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the life of a young woman, of lower middle class, in Oxford during the 30’s, at a time when there were very few women in the University and when they were not as “liberated” as they would become thirty years later (female colleges were subjected to curfew and under a stricter discipline). Unsurprisingly, these were highly formative and positive years for Barbara Pym, both personally and for her literary development. Oxford would remain a magnet for the rest of her life and several of her lifelong friendships were forged during this time. In her next stage, it was revealing to see how the rising Germany could offer great fascination for a romantic, idealistic and curious mind. As it was also reassuring how her inquisitiveness eventually led her to overcome her naivete and join in the defensive war effort. For those of us for whom “normal” life during WW2 during the Blitz in London is unimaginable, the account of those years during which one just had to continue one’s life, seems both comforting and perplexing. We follow Pym as she became a WREN and was posted to Naples, a city that had a particularly difficult period during the war.

The reader feels delighted when Pym begins to have literary success even if the income from her writing activities was not sufficient and she had to work for the International African Institute. Even so, her readers know that this job was very fruitful for her since her observative mind could not help but see that Anthropologists and Novelists shared a similar interest in human behaviour – Pym’s London subjects were really as exotic as the people from the Samburu tribe.

As Pym entered her literary Golden Age of eleven years (1950-1961), Byrne goes into each one of her published six books (same number as those left by Jane Austen), although I found this section less interesting for there is too much of plot giveaways. In this section we also read about the literary circles in the UK, with mentions of Elizabeth Bowen (I was reading in parallel her House in Paris) and Elizabeth Taylor. Then disaster struck, or the world changed and became too modern, and Pym’s literary fortunes turned downwards like the fabled wheel. By this time, I felt a great empathy for Pym, and given that she almost stopped writing during what Byrne calls the “wilderness years” I also felt angry for her publishers could be held responsible for having deprived us of more of her works. When 1977 arrives and the TLS celebrated their anniversary by publishing an article of forgotten writers (she was the only one such writer named twice – by Larkin and Lord Cecil), the reader of her bio feels vindicated.

The personalities she created – saw herself in a 3rd person

The wheel turned again, though, and cancer visited her twice. The first time Pym triumphed over the disease, but, as we know and fear, cancer easily leaves a trail that it can easily and tragically revisit. This happened to Pym and the second time she was not as successful dying at a relatively early age.

When I finished Pym’s Adventures, I felt withdrawal symptoms but the thought that this biography existed was reassuring. Byrne in her Afterword evaluates a previous biography, A Lot to Ask: The Life of Barbara Pym, written by Hazel Holt, a friend of Pym’s. But in Byrnes’s eyes, as the biography was promoted by Hilary, Barbara’s sister, this was not neutral and analytical enough to offer Pym a place in posterity Byrne also thought that the collection of Pym’s documents A Very Private Eye: The Diaries, Letters And Notebooks Of Barbara Pym, was too edited and expunged.

To enter a literary pantheon was Pym’s dream – she used to daydream with her friend Robert Liddell about the day when her and his documents such as diaries, letters and drafts, would be archived in the Bodleian, where indeed they now are (even though an American University tried to purchase them). In fact, Pym in her diaries sometimes addressed her future biographer and expressed concern at not leaving gaps of time unrecorded in order to alleviate the task of this hypothetical biographer. Being aware that other eyes would read her diaries, she censored sections – both intimate details and smoothed out the period she got too close to Nazi members. It is also curious that she often saw herself in a third-person mode, from the outside, creating various versions of her own persona.

When I next turn to another of Pym’s novels my sensitivity will have sharpened and her voice will sound a great deal more personal. Ah, and last but not least, I have emerged from this book with a list of about five more reads – works by Liddell, Taylor and Compton-Burnett.

[Melindam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"(...) So you see, my dear, how with a little polishing, life could become literature or at least fiction." -Barbara Pym in a letter to a friend


I have loved Barbara Pym's books ever since I ran into them here on Goodreads back in 2016 I think, even though I had never heard of her before.
I also remember checking out her short bio here on GR and despite reading that Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin "nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century in a famous article in the 1975 Times Literary Supplement" and despite considering her "the queen of trivia", I just went and underrated her as a person, while loving her books, totally insensitive to the irony of it all.
So basically I did to her what her oblivious, self-satisfied, smug characters did to my favourite heroines (Mildred from Excellent Women, Belinda from Some Tame Gazelle, Ianthe from An Unsuitable Attachment) in her novels. Although maybe Pym would have appreciated that irony, I am just ashamed of myself now.

When this book came up as a recommendation and I checked it out, I conceitedly thought: oh my, how can a biography about Barbara Pym be 700 pages long?!

After finishing, here I am, humbly begging Pym's pardon. Because oh boy, what a life she had!! Fascinating and bizarre, colourful, happy and sad, a life worthy of literature and fiction and author Paula Byrne did full justice to hers.

I have made a ton of notes amounting to a full novella, hope I will have the time to work some of them into this review eventually.

Narrator Antonia Beamish also deserves high praise.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

I love Barbara Pym's novels. I only have 2 left to read, which I've put off so that I don't run out; having read this, I'm now looking forward to finishing them and rereading the lot.

I had previously read her 'A Very Private Eye' her letters and diaries, which were heavily edited by her sister and one of her best friends,, who quite naturally would wish to preserve her reputation so I felt that this biography gave much more of a sense of who she really was. In the early 1930's, she travelled to Germany and had a Nazi boyfriend; later on she was deeply ashamed of this, naturally, and her early biographies, and the published diaries have this part of her life largely edited out.

We largely skim over her childhood,, which suits me, that is hardly ever of much interest to me in a literary biography, I like to get to adulthood and the writing and publishing of novels. The Chapters are short, with marvellous titles such as 'In Which our Heroine is Born at Owestrey'. Despite it's length, it never started to drag and was always very readable. The author had access to Pym's papers, stored at the Bodleian Library including some of her unpublished novels, (how lucky). I think it would make a valuable addition to any Pym fans shelf.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest opinion*.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pym seems to have had her usual crush

Barbara Pym does indeed have a lot of crushes on men. A lot. Some of them turn into brief love affairs; some become friendships, a couple lifelong; most fizzle out. But I have to admire a woman still so ready to throw herself headlong into unrequited love even as she grows older.

Anyone (and I was in this category until very recently) who thinks Pym and her novels are dreary will find this biography utterly surprising: but anyone (and this is me too!) who has giggled through any of her books (Excellent Women in my case) will adore the Pym we meet here: witty, clever, ebullient, flirtatious, bold, sometimes outrageous (her love affair with an SS officer...) and very modern in the way she doesn't chase marriage, motherhood or domesticity, preferring her success as a novelist.

Byrne has a quirky style of writing that didn't always sit well with me: her picaresque chapter titles can be off not just when making light of the Nazis, but in foregrounding Pym's tea party with Elizabeth Bowen and 'two homosexuals' as if they're exotic creatures to be visited. But I think this is ill-judged, not intentional.

I also found this biography uneven: I was gripped through the Oxford chapters but after the war the story becomes more sparse with lots of detailed re-tellings of the plots of both published and unpublished novels, the former without spoiler warnings.

There's far too much emphasis on how much Pym is like a modern Jane Austen, a label which is thrown around lavishly. She was also reading Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath and, arguably, might have shared some of their emotions about gendered relationships, the struggle for some form of female independence, and what it means and requires to be a female writer.

It's especially striking how unconventional Pym was: at Oxford in the 1930s she was sexually active and quite unrepentant. Her appetite for male company of all sorts is refreshing and I couldn't help wondering how she negotiated that in relation to the middle-class, Church of England upbringing she had and which is so prominent as a social setting in her books. Byrne doesn't comment on the latter which surprised me.

Byrne essentially keeps this light and bright, jaunty and cheerful, even through Pym's final years. Don't expect psychological depth or expert commentary on her penchant for almost masochistic desire for unavailable men, but as an introduction to Pym, this is readable and affectionate.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew little about Barbara Pym and now I know much more - how ahead of her time she was (and then regarded as behind the times), how funny she was, how sharp, how she fell for unavailable men. Perhaps you have to have read at least some of her books to fully appreciate this biography (I'd recommend the wonderful Excellent Women) but it was also great to get a sense of the times she lived through - Oxford in the 30s, Germany in the late 30s, London through the subsequent decades. My only niggle was Byrne's choice to preface each short chapter with a picaresque heading: 'In which Barbara....' does something or other. Byrne explains why she's done this, but I don't want to be told what's going to happen in a chapter before it happens.

[Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love the novels of Barbara Pym immensely. Barbara Pym could make mundane things endlessly fascinating. The author of this bio could not. It was rather a bit of a snooze.

The ‘Miss Pym’ construction was used far too frequently and was cutesy in a way that diminishes the subject. From the title, to the text, to chapter titles, to photo captions. It was too much.

That Pym had Nazi sympathies is a fact that the author justly writes about. However, the way she writes about Pym’s Nazi boyfriend and her infatuation with Nazi Germany was also a little too cute and casual than is seemly in the 21st century.

“Pym was mesmerized by the handsome blackshirt…” Not sure that adjective is called for unless clearly qualified as being Pym’s perception, which is borne out by the block quote that follows it. Why did Byrne call him handsome?

“Barbara was…swept up in the excitement of the Third Reich…” Maybe swap out excitement for propaganda.

A chapter title: “In which Fraulein Pym falls for a Handsome Nazi” Perhaps the author doesn’t need to excoriate Pym on every page for being a Nazi sympathizer, but she also doesn’t have to make light of it either.

“It was a spectacular event, the Nazi Party had pulled out all the stops.” Did they really Paula? We must find out who their party planner is.

Another chapter title: “In which our Heroine goes to Germany for the third time and sleeps with her Nazi” Oh how cute! He’s her Nazi.

And then in describing the douchebaggery of Pym’s English love interests Byrne writes this: “…she was headed back to Germany, where she was sure of receiving better treatment at the hands of her blackshirt boyfriend.” Really?

When it comes to Pym’s penchant for falling in love with gay men, I don’t know how annoyed I should be with Pym or with Byrne for making it seem like Pym’s driving force was simply to move from one infatuation to another. I’d like to think that Pym had more going on in her life than just that. Maybe it was the author’s over reliance on personal journals that makes Pym seem like an emotional simpleton who couldn’t pass the Bechdel Test if her life depended on it.

Pym’s life was Pym’s life, if that’s who she was, so be it. But Byrne’s way of writing about ‘homosexuals’ got to be annoying in the extreme. Try this one: “She was especially interested in his homosexual relationship with Eric Oliver.” Guess what Miss Byrne, it’s just a relationship. Maybe you meant to say romantic or sexual or something else. Pym can use antiquated language, she’s dead, and she wrote those lines 60 years ago. But Byrne is only two years older than I am. Too young to be that oblivious. You’d think she was 107.

I will end this where I started it, Pym’s bio didn’t have to be this boring.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whimsical and perilous charm of daily life

Many biographies are written in stiff, academic style, but that just would not be appropriate for the biography of Miss Barbara Pym. Pym, as many of her friends called her, was a highly intelligent woman with a lively imagination. She chose to dramatize her own life with love affair angst, sometimes even through made-up romances with men who weren't even aware of her. I am surprised that she didn't want to be an actress—she certainly threw herself into romantic roles.

I think I'm being mostly fair when I say that Barbara Pym was a boy-crazy young woman. However, her adventures gave her abundant fodder for her fiction. Pym was very observant and kept diaries which only sharpened her memory. And, as the author notes, “Barbara Pym's male characters are more often than not shifty, feckless, selfish and self-dramatising, relying on excellent women to solve their difficulties.” One of the reviewers of her first novel said it was “so gentle that the reader scarcely notices the claws.” As a woman who has occasionally weaponized “niceness,” I can fully appreciate and approve of this description.

I think Pym suffered from the same problem as Dorothy L. Sayers: she couldn't find a man as intelligent as herself who would take her seriously. They both enjoyed their time at university, although Sayers seems to have been more academically inclined. But Pym got her source material and her close friend Jock Liddell out of those years, both things worth having. Although she avidly pursued men and relationships, I suspect she would have found marriage dull as dishwater. As Pym found during WWII, housework is repetitive and boring. Laundry, cleaning, and cooking are all necessary, but are mostly noticed if you don't do them, rather than when you do keep up. Pym liked to be appreciated, not taken for granted. At some level, I think she was aware of this part of herself, as she had a talent for choosing unavailable men (been there, done that).

I now realize why I love Barbara Pym's writing as much as I do. Barbara Pym is my spirit animal. Independent, intelligent, wanting a relationship, but unwilling to give up her options, especially since she can't find a decent, compatible man. I identify with her far more closely than I would ever have believed if I hadn't run across this book.

As the author says in her afterword, “Pym is one of the great writers of the human heart.” She also states “Pym was a courageous writer and a brave woman. Women are at the heart of her stories. They are not all ‘excellent women’, but they are flesh and blood.” I wholeheartedly agree.

[Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and William Collins for a review copy of this book.

I first came across Barbara Pym I think may be ten years ago through an online book group on Shelfari, and I remember the first time I read her (now I really don’t remember which of her books it was I started with), I thought the book too melancholy. But still I tried others and soon began to really enjoy her works, especially the fun she pokes at people, and so many times at the world of academics, and soon enough I began to count her among my favourite authors. So of course when this bio appeared on NetGalley, not having read a bio of her before, I jumped at the chance, and put in a request.

Barbara Pym had a rather interesting life with plenty of ups and downs (a lot more the latter) both in her romantic life and in her career as author, and this book takes us along on Pym’s journey. Opening with a ‘pilgrimage’ she made to her favourite author Jane Austen’s Cottage during one of the toughest periods in her life when her work was rejected for over 16 years by publishers, we go back to get a glimpse of Pym’s childhood and thereafter go along with her as she attends Oxford, is a Wren in the second world war (and travels to Italy), begins her literary career (after a great deal of struggle), then through the 16 years that she was considered too old-fashioned to publish, and finally as her writing career revives. Pym did not have the best luck in love and most of her romances seemed to end in heartbreak for her, and she often ended up pining (perhaps stereotypically) after the wrong person. But she was lucky in her friendships and in the admirers of her work for it was her friends who supported her through life, from critiquing her work and helping her improve it to fighting to get her the recognition she deserved which poet Philip Larkin did for years. But whatever she suffered, whether in her personal life or the rejection in her career, writing was something that was a part of who she was and she never stopped, no matter the outcome in terms of publication which was something I thought really admirable (and perhaps also requiring a certain strength).

The first thing I noticed in this book was the delightfully titled chapters but I couldn’t point my finger to the inspiration behind that until I came to the part where the author Paula Byrne refers to Pym’s love of picaresque novels, and I thought this a lovely touch by Byrne.

The book looks a lot into her romantic life and various entanglements which isn’t something I usually enjoy reading about (as it seems much too intrusive) but in the case of Pym, as Byrne explains and we see later, all of these experiences that Pym went through was where so many of the characters in her stories and even specific scenes and events came from. And this wasn’t confined to only her love life, but her experiences working at the International Africa Society and as assistant editor of the Africa Journal too provided material for so many of her characters (all those anthropologists) and also the fun she pokes at academia. So it was with the experiences living in a bedsit with her sister (this strangely, her first book foretold). And it was really interesting to see how she saw people and things for who they were and how she interpreted them eventually in her writings.

In her life she met and interacted with several other writers including Elizabeth Bowen and developed life-long friendships with Robert (‘Jock’) Liddell and Philip Larkin. In fact, she and Larkin (who admired her works) corresponded for years before they actually met but Larkin put in a lot of effort to help her work get the recognition it deserved, and it was eventually his and Lord David Cecil’s mention of her as England’s most underrated writer that brought attention back to her, and not only did her works begin to be published once more, she was also nominated for a Booker. This after all the hardships she had gone though also makes the reader feel as pleased for her as her friends must have been.

Books too are central to the bio as we see the various books and authors that Pym read and that inspired her from Crome Yellow which heavily influenced her first efforts, to the works of Elizabeth von Arnim, Jane Austen and Ivy Compton-Burnett (among others).

Certain things like the different personas she adopted at different periods and some of her obsessiveness I found somewhat strange but at the same time, Pym certainly had an interesting life, despite its hardships, as a result of which perhaps her works saw her explore themes that were perhaps even ahead of her time, and certainly not in the conventional mould. In many ways, her own story is as interesting and poignant as her books.

Drawn from Pym’s diaries and papers, this book turned out to be a very interesting and enjoyable read. Four and a half stars.

[Geevee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paula Byrne's book on Barbara Pym is sensitive, very enjoyable and always informative.

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym captures the essence of Pym's books by relating how and why she wrote the way she did. Her books were deeply autobiographical and, by using her life experiences through the stages of her life, Paula Byrne helps the reader unpick the characters, events, humour and sadness within those novels.

We experience Pym's early years and then onto [up to] Oxford for university, where she experiences friendship, love and hurt, along with her life living and studying in the city of the dreaming spires. These formative years show Pym as a far different character to the one I had assumed from reading her books. Without spoiling any future reader's enjoyment, friends and acquaintances are made for life and provide much rich detail for her novels.

As Pym grows older we see her literary career start to flourish as she writes constantly and share hopes and disappointments with those she likes and loves (as lovers and also friends). Her war service is interesting seeing her working in London, Bristol and in Italy. Post-war, she has great success and then experiences what she called her wilderness years (like Churchill), and this part of the book sees her struggles with publishing and love, whilst living and working in London.

The final part of the book sees her renaissance as a published author who, thanks to her friends' help in continuing to support - very notably publicly Philip Larkin - she continues to write good stories. The latter years show Pym as a happy woman considering her life, loves and losses and stoically grappling (successfully) with breast cancer and then finally the illness that would end her life.

The book provides, through Pym's diaries, letters, other ephemera and information - all held at her beloved Oxford in the Bodleian Library - a wonderful way to read and understand her. She enjoyed sex, had homosexual male friends, loved many times, enjoyed classical music but liked the Beatles, was a great friend to many and observed and used those friends, lovers and events to shape her books and the characters.

For any Pym fan this is a must; if you are not a fan, or even familiar with Pym's works, the book will provide much interest. It features life in pre-war Britain, including a young woman at university; Britain at war and aspects such as evacuees and women's war work; post-war England and working and living in a new era of hope and change; the 1960s and societal changes and Pym's rejection by the publishing industry and then her renaissance and final years feted by that same industry.

One of the most enjoyable books I have read.

[Laura Spira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have greatly enjoyed Barbara Pym’s books: I first discovered her early novels in the public library in my teens and was delighted when the more recent books were published. So I was quite keen to learn more about her.

The jokey title and chapter headings should have warned me that this was not a style of biography i would appreciate. The early chapters paint Pym as a young woman entirely obsessed with herself and her relationships on a very superficial level, an unflattering and unsympathetic portrait. Many youthful diaries would probably look much the same and many of their authors would probably cringe at having them exposed in such detail. I found this neither helpful in understanding Pym, nor interesting.

While the influence of her relationships on her writing was obviously relevant, I wasn’t very interested in how her characters were based on the people in her life although I might have been had the people involved been more vividly described. But the parade of men she chose to fall in love with became indistinguishable. Were they all such rotters? Or was she more difficult and demanding than the author allows us to see? The source material seems to be treated uncritically, with the letters and diaries taken at face value.

I wanted to know more about *how* she wrote and the relationship between her work in anthropology and her writing. The author makes some superficial statements about the link between anthropology and fiction which suggest a lack of familiarity with anthropology.

A close comparison of the early drafts of her work with the published versions could have been valuable but the author simply quotes large chunks of the former uncritically.

The writing style leaves something to be desired and better editing might have helped. First names and surnames are swapped for no apparent reason, making for a difficult read, especially where people had names which could be either, like Henry Harvey. The author’s misuse of the word “expiated” jumped out at me at one point and there were some rather silly observations, such as the notion that if Jane Austen had been published sooner we would have had more of her novels to read. And i was puzzled by a sudden reference to cat food late in the book when, in spite of overly detailed descriptions of Pym’s domestic arrangements, no cats had been mentioned.

I don’t think this biography does justice to Barbara Pym as an individual or as a writer but I hope that it may encourage people to read her work.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

[JacquiWine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly immersive biography of one of my favourite writers, Barbara Pym. Comprehensive, eye-opening and affectionate, a wonderful read for any fan of Pym's work.

Byrne digs deep into the detail here, following Pym from her childhood in Shropshire to her twilight years in Oxfordshire, illuminating with great clarity and affection each distinct phase of the author’s life. The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym is written in the style of a picaresque narrative, which gives the book a jaunty tone, very much in line with its subject’s world. As such, it is presented as an engaging sequence of vignettes with titles such as ‘Miss Pym’s Summer of Love’, ‘Miss Pym passes her Interview’ and ‘Hullo Skipper’.

Following her birth in Oswestry in 1913, Pym lived through a remarkable period of history, a time that encompassed two World Wars, a royal abdication and sweeping social change; and while it would be impossible for me to cover all aspects of her life in this review, I hope to convey something of the flavour of the book.

Pym’s childhood was a happy and loving one. Born into a respectable, middle-class family in 1913, Barbara was well suited to Oswestry’s comfortable routines. Her father, Frederic, was a good-natured solicitor, and her mother, Irena, the epitome of the ‘excellent women’ Pym would go on to portray with great affection in her novels.

Irena – an avid reader and lover of music – had clear ambitions for Barbara and her younger daughter, Hilary, supporting their education in the hope they would progress to Oxford. In 1931, Barbara gladly fulfilled her mother’s wishes, winning a place at St Hilda’s College to read English. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these new surrounding proved stimulating and exhilarating to the young Pym, and she embraced University life with great enthusiasm and relish.

Pym found Oxford ‘intoxicating’. In no small part this was because she suddenly found herself the centre of male attention and, like many girls from single-sex schools, she was ready to enjoy being in the company of young men. As with her heroine, Miss Bates, in her third published novel Jane and Prudence, the male undergraduates beat a path to Pym’s door. It was not only the preponderance of men (the ratio was one woman to ten men) that enhanced her desirability, but also the fact that she was so funny and interesting. She was in particular a magnet for homosexual men, who were drawn to her wit and playfulness. (pp. 26–27)

To read the rest of my review, please visit:

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[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always feel sad when the subject of a biography dies! 😅 Barbara Pym’s death was moving. She had come so alive for me that it was almost like experiencing news of her death in real time.

Review below is a work in progress as I have time to write!

Barbara Pym is the author I've heard most frequently compared to Jane Austen, so it is fitting that Paula Byrne wrote a biography of each. For a long time, I was puzzled by the connection between Austen and Pym. On the surface, the subject matter, the writing style, and the tone of the two authors' novels are quite different. This biography helped me to make deeper connections between Pym and Austen, both with their personal lives and with their writing.

For example, both Austen and Pym wrote stories early and often. Neither author married or had children, but they did have formative relationships with men. Jane Austen was close to her father and brothers. Pym had both lovers and long-term friendships with men. Pym had six novels published before her "wilderness" years and Austen published six novels. Both Pym and Austen's lives were ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

I've seen this word in other reviews and it's true: readable. This biography was so much fun to read and the pacing rarely dragged for me. I loved reading about Pym's time in Oxford, her love of language and languages in her young adult years, what she did during WWII, and settling into life in London post-war and becoming the novelist she longed to be. She published six novels through the 1950s. When she went to submit her seventh novel, An Unsuitable Attachment, to her publisher Jonathan Cape, it was rejected as being 'old fashioned' and 'out of touch'. From then until 1977, Pym could not publish a novel, though she continued to write and send out manuscripts to 20+ publishers.

Byrne wrote about Pym's 'wilderness' years with great sensitivity and pathos and compared her wilderness years to Jane Austen's own years between selling her manuscript in the early 1800s, but not being published until 1811. When Pym's early novels were published, she received a fan letter from poet and writer Philip Larkin. Earlier in Pym's life, her friendship with Jock Liddell was formative for her development as a writer. Larkin became that friend for Pym in her mature writing years. They corresponded for fifteen years before meeting in person and were in touch via letter and visits until Pym's death in 1980. Larkin was incredibly supportive during Pym's wilderness years, and I was moved by the descriptions of their friendship and the lengths Larkin went to to help her get back into the publishing world.

Ultimately, his efforts paid off when both he and Oxford literature professor, Lord David Cecil, named Pym as the most under-rated novelist of the 20th century. Because Byrne described Pym's wilderness years with such sensitivity, I felt triumphant when Pym was returned to literary favor on a wave of accolades. The tragedy is that her earlier breast cancer had recurred, so she only had three years to enjoy being on top of the literary world. Her death was poignant.

I loved reading about how Pym had an affinity for Austen early on. I'm sure Byrne mentioned Austen often because she herself is an Austen biographer, but I loved reading about Pym's thoughts on Austen and how she would read certain novels at certain times. For example, she took Persuasion with her to Naples when she was in the Wrens during WWII.

I think the biggest difference between Pym and Austen is the tone. Austen's novels certainly have somber undertones, but they feel more comedic to me than Pym's novels. Pym's novels can be downright somber at times and even the comedy has an edge to it. That being said, the more I consider the two sets of novels, the more similiarities I see. Both authors paint miniatures in their novels. more to come here....

Before starting the biography, I knew Pym had never married because she writes so movingly and amusingly about spinsters, but I didn't realize how many love affairs she had. Byrne paints her as having a slightly obsessive personality. She had at least four substantial affairs in her life: with Henry Harvey, Julian Amery, Gordon Glover, and Richard Roberts. All these men found their way into her fiction as she processed her relationships with these men and why each relationship failed. There was a predictable pattern and it become rather tedious to read about at brief moments for each of the men. Fortunately, the narrative moved on quickly.

[Jon Blanchard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paula Byrne’s new biography is enthusiastic and extensively researched and will almost certainly replace Hazel Holt’s biography of 1990, which was written by a close friend in cooperation with Pym’s sister and other friends. A contemporary book from a detached viewpoint is now needed.

Unfortunately Paula Byrne is a disappointment. She quite rightly wishes to counter the cosy image of Barbara Pym as “a spinster bicycling to Holy Communion”, a superficial view but not unknoown. Her main means to do this is to record every possible sexual encounter, including speculating when there is no firm evidence other than missing diary pages.

Barbara Pym’s attitude towards men and romance were individual and this is the basis of both the comedy and sadness of all the main novels. Men are fascinating but ineffectual and a hopeless passion is preferable to a permanent relationship. So it is important to look in some detail at her actual romantic relations. The problem with Byrne is that she records so much without seeming to tie it together so that the blow by blow account of Pym’s Oxford years becomes tedious.

Furthermore Byrne fails to engage or spend much time on other important aspects. Among the howlers which have not been corrected, for example on page 597 she writes “At a (Catholic) church service in June, she noted the charming Irish vicar”. Two problems here. For Barbara Pym a Catholic church could well have been in the Church of England and this is presumably what she would have called Roman Catholic. And if it is, a Roman Catholic priest is never a vicar, an exclusively Anglican term. There are number of similarly careless gaffes in the book but the point here is Byrne’s lack of interest and ignorance of the church background which is such an important aspect of both Pym’s life and novels. None of them fail to have some church reference, generally central to the life of the characters. I would like to know a bit more about the churches she attended as well as the men she went to bed with.

Related to the world of Anglo Catholic church going is the issue of camp. This is a subjective matter but I don’t think Byrne appreciates it. All she can say about the gloriously outrageous Wilf Bason in Glass of Blessings, surely one of Pym’s greatest creations, is that he is kleptomaniac, which is not accurate.

A recurrent feature of Pym’s novels is a leading female protagonist with a chronic sense of social self-consciousness (Belinda, Mildred, Wilmet, Letty), although there are certainly excellent women who have no social inhibitions at all (Sybil in Glass of Blessings, notably). Although Barbara Pym was in many ways highly conventional (at least superficially) she was always the observer on the outside looking in. it is this aspect that probably led Hazel Holt to call her biography A Lot to Ask, which Byrne calls “an apologetic title”.l But Byrne is so keen to make out Pym a modern liberated woman who “one sense would have understood the #meToo movement”. That sounds wishful thinking. Pym lived through the years of campaigning on behalf of women and homosexuals and took no part in it. She was indeed accepting of gay men at the time when this was not common but she was not unique in this (for example Nancy Mitford).

The analysis of the novels is fine, although not ground breaking. I agree The Sweet Dove Died is Pym’s masterpiece although I know a number of self confessed Pym fans find it too uncomfortable. But the details are often muddled, notably on page 550 when she mentions a man in one book (Excellent Women) unable to make up his mind between two women in another book (Jane and Prudence).

At twice the length of Hazel Holt with many inaccuracies this should have been properly edited and even then despite Paula Byrne’s enthusiasm I feel she is forcing Barbara Pym into an inappropriate mould. But I fully agree with her assessment “Pym was a courageous writer and brave woman”.

[Resh (The Book Satchel) · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy Barbara Pym novels, you will love this book. It presents a lovely read on Pym's life; her happy childhood, her years reading English at St. Hilda's College, her finding Oxford as 'intoxicating', her fasciantion for Germany. For the book lover, there are many passages that make you think 'is this in '? Reading about a loved writer is lovely that way. I kept looking for her excellent women, her men, the scientific tempers of some of her characters, church and more in the pages of this biography. It helped that I was on a Pym roll this year, so I could dip in and out of her novels and this book. There are diary entries, letters, her inner thoughts put together from her writing—A chunky and worthwhile read.

Much thanks to the publishers for an e-copy. All opinions are my own

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had just finished an honors course on Jane Austen and graduated from university when I read an article on the most underrated writers. Barbara Pym was mentioned by two contributors. And that is how I came to read every one of Pym’s reissued and newly published novels. A number of my copies are first American hardbound editions.

I was excited to learn that Paula Byrne was writing a biography of Pym and when the galley became available quickly requested it. It was a joy to revisit Pym’s life and works.

It is shocking to consider that in the early 60s Pym’s publisher rejected her books as ‘cozy domestic comedies.’ Homosexuality was a crime until 1967, but Pym’s novels have gay characters. There are all kinds of ‘unsuitable attachments,’ women falling for younger men or gay men or married men. How did the publisher miss Pym’s biting satire?

Pym’s life was anything but conventional, a woman who loved deeply and unwisely.

She went to Oxford a mere twelve years after they first admitted female students. She immediately began obsessing over boys, stalking them and basically throwing herself at them. She was date raped and slept with a man who she knew didn’t value her. She met a gay man who became a dear lifetime friend. She traveled to Germany and fell in love with a man in the SS; it took a long while for her esteem for Nazism to be shaken. Early in WWII, she and her sister Hilary took in children evacuated from London. She joined the WRENS. She fell in love with a married man, a known philanderer. And, she fell in love with a younger gay man. She kept in touch with her old lovers and was distraught when dropped.

Pym’s novels are laugh out loud humorous. And they are poignant, exploring our penchant to allow our heart to fog our judgement. They were extremely autobiographical and based on people in her life.

I realized how so much of Pym’s picadilloes I had shared as a teenager. Stalking boys I liked as a teenager. Enjoying being in love with a boy who kept his distance, just needing to have someone to love.. Keeping a journal.

Byrne’s title comes from Pym’s diaries which were prefaced “The Adventures of Miss Pym,” and the chapters have lively titles like “Miss Pym attempts her First Novel. ‘Young Men in Fancy Dress,’ or ‘In which our Heroine goes to Germany for the third time and sleeps with her Nazi.’

And yes, Pym and a Nazi SS man fell in love and she perhaps could have married him. She sported a swastika pin. When she could no longer ignore the truth, she shut it all up and pretended it never happened. Although, she was glad to later learn that her Nazi didn’t approve of Nazi genocide.

Pym’s novels, published and unpublished, are discussed and it sent me back to my collection, opening books and revisiting them. I opened Some Tame Gazelle and found myself chuckling, wanting to waylay my husband and read it out loud.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enchanted and tempted by Kalliope's beautiful review of this book I didn’t hesitate a second when I saw it in my local bookshop. Since Barbara Pym was still only on my tbr-list, it might have been better to start with Miss Pym herself but …. patience is not always my strong side. Delaying reading a book that I want to read in order to read another one, or other ones first, turned out to be too much even this time.
I admit, it took me a while to warm up to the personality of this author who was so prone to falling in love with a wrong person, and who seemed to be so kind and interesting and yet never stopped being alone despite constant longing for that special someone.
In her career she was loved and forgotten and then loved again - a real publishing roller coaster which she seemed to have taken with the same endurance as she took her many disappointments in love.

Through the seven hundred pages I had a fair chance to get well acquainted with Barbara Pym, her character, her self-image that so obviously could use some improvement, and with the full account of her writing and other life adventures. Paule Byrne makes sure to give a comprehensive account of Barbara’s life, and that nothing she wrote should pass without a retelling and a comment. Probably with all rights, but as much as I appreciate the information, at some stage I felt that I just had to listen to her own voice instead. Fortunately my bottomless kindle already contained ‘Some tame gazelle’. So the adventures of Miss Pym were interrupted by Some tame gazelle that I perhaps enjoyed even more thanks to Ms Byrne’s impressive work.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography is so much more than even the rave reviews let on! What a portrait of a woman from young girl to her early death in her mid-sixties and the slow growth of a beloved, individual writer.

As all who love Barbara Pym know, she struggled for many many years to write something worth publishing. She then had six (I think) books published one after the other until quite suddenly, the small audience for her books (which seldom sold more than 4000 copies each, mostly purchased by lending libraries) was considered too meager for publishing profit. Mega-sale books such as Valley of the Dolls pushed hers out and for many many years, no one would publish her. It all changed quite suddenly, and she was published and republished and lauded during the last few years of her life. Fortunately, her health held up long enough to enjoy some of it.

As a personal choice, I would have loved to hear more about Barbara Pym's relationship with her sister and her parents, for these sustained her more surely than the men she loved who never stayed around very long or were unavailable. But the author said she had to cut the book, so I imagine those things went. Alas!

Fascinating to learn what circumstances make a beloved writer, and to be able to trace her path so intimately.

[KOMET · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've become aware of Barbara Pym the writer within the last 5 years. She is one among a small number of British women writers who have managed to pique my interest over the past couple of decades. (For example: Elizabeth Jane Howard, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Howatch, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, and Sarah Walters.) But it wasn't until I heard last year a radio interview with Paula Byrne about The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, the latest Barbara Pym biography, that I set myself to buy and read it. Frankly, Byrne's enthusiasm about Pym and her novels is what made me want to know more about Barbara Pym.

Pym was born in Shropshire, a rural county in Northwest England bordering on Wales in 1913. She was the oldest of 2 children and went on to study at Oxford during the early 1930s. This was at a time when there were few women students at the university. Indeed, women students at Oxford were regarded by both the university establishment and the male students as rare, exotic birds. For Pym, Oxford represented one of the happiest times of her life. She came to love all the traditions, customs, and habits unique to the university - and formed there many relationships that proved crucial in shaping her as a writer and a person.

After graduating from Oxford, Pym availed herself of the opportunity to travel in Europe. She went to Germany a few times before the Second World War, where she made friends and had a great romance with a young SS officer (which she later took pains to expunge from her diaries; Pym had studied German, became a fluent speaker, and developed a deep interest in German literature and culture). Following the outbreak of war in September 1939, Pym helped her mother accommodate in the family home some children from the city centers, who had been evacuated by the British government to the countryside, where it was felt they would be safe from Luftwaffe bombs. This was proved to be a temporary arrangement for the parents of these children later reclaimed them.

Later in the war, Pym would relocate to London (where her sister Hilary was working for the BBC; both sisters enjoyed a very close, supportive relationship that would last throughout Pym's lifetime), where she worked as a censor in the government until 1943. Then she joined the WRENs (i.e. the Women's Royal Naval Service) after suffering a broken heart from a man she dearly loved, and by war's end, was serving in Italy.

All the while, Pym was writing. She had long harbored ambitions to be a writer, and received the greatest encouragement from Jock Liddell, a close friend from her Oxford days, after sharing with him the draft of what would later become Pym's first published novel, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950.

The best part of The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym is its readability. Though coming in at slightly over 600 pages, I fairly well breezed through this book. Byrne made Barbara Pym come alive before my eyes. She faced a lot of challenges in her life, and even when she had been dropped by Jonathan Cape (her publisher) in the early 1960s, because they felt her novels, with their focus on everyday people and their foibles in a uniquely English environment, no longer answered to general readers, she continued to write - though she despaired of ever finding a publisher again who would promote her novels.

Thankfully, by 1977, there began a resurgence of interest in Barbara Pym (who had always had fans) and her novels. Sadly, Pym wouldn't live long enough to fully enjoy it, dying of cancer in January 1980. But she did die with the satisfaction that the literary establishment embraced her and her talent as a writer - and that she had fans of her novels not only in the UK, but also in the U.S. and across the globe.

Now that I've read The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, I'm eager to begin reading from the Pym novels that I bought recently. I want to see why many regard her as a 20th century equivalent of Jane Austen.

[Laura Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2* I love Barbara Pym's novels but, alas, as I read this biography based on her diaries I didn't much like her as a young woman. She reminded me of all those girls of my youth that I detested because of their immaturity and naivete, their hands on flirtatiousnes, their needy "look at me, love me or I am nothing" identities. Yet, as I read, I had to to admire her perseverance in the face of repeated rejections, her need to write whether anyone read it or not. I am truthfully a bit jealous of her lifelong friendships. Those who stuck by her were rewarded with a more mature and considerate friend. I would have liked to have known that Barbara. What I enjoyed most about The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym was seeing the connections between her life experiences and her writing. She wrote about what she knew with grace and humor and she did it so damn well! I look forward to rereading her novels with new eyes. I received a drc from the publisher via Netgalley.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely enjoyable. I have never thought before how pleasurable it might be to explore a life of a writer whose work I know very well. Turns out, everything BUT EVERYTHING is autobiographical. Now I need to reread all of her novels in order and laugh at these unattainable men whom she wasted her life on...

[Kathleen Flynn]

I've been on a Barbara Pym kick this year, and after enjoying a Glass of Blessings, Autumn Quartet and Excellent Women, I found myself curious about the life of their author.

This book answered all the questions I had (like, how did she happen to become a writer, and how did she fit writing into her life?) and some I had not thought to consider (like, what did Barbara Pym think about Nazis?).

One might imagine, from reading her novels, that Pym was a cautious, genteel, sort of person, who spent a lot of time volunteering at her local church. Clever and observant, of course -- she could not be the novelist she was otherwise -- but outwardly rather dull. This book, based heavily on the extensive diaries that Pym kept throughout her life and subsequently gave to the Bodleian Library, was therefore a shock to my system.

She was wild! Unrepentantly sexually active as an Oxford undergraduate in the 1930s, besotted with the German nation and a certain handsome storm trooper later in the 30s, always falling for the wrong men and dramatizing her unhappiness in her diaries. A keen observer of the human condition, well-developed sense of the ridiculous, lover of literature, alarmingly prone to imagine scenarios for people she didn't actually know and then stalk them to learn more. She lived through very interesting times and wrote through it all. She was ahead of her times in many ways, in her absolute determination to live her own life.

Of course she is most interesting because of her writing. She enjoyed moderate success in the 1950s, writing and publishing six novels. But in 1963, her longtime publisher rejected her latest novel, and she could not find a publisher elsewhere. Her novels had come to seem old-fashioned amid the social changes of the era. Dismayed, she kept writing -- and kept meeting rejection. She had made writer friends by now who admired her work, she had acquired loyal fans. But still.

Then, in the late 1970s, her fortunes revived in in a way that is both fairy-tale gratifying and a grating example of how random and fickle the business of literary reputations really is. She lived long enough to enjoy her newfound renown, but unfortunately not much longer.

This book left me inspired by the courage and occasional zaniness with which Pym lived her life, and by the way she kept on writing even when hope was gone.

[Jennifer Mills Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This biography improves upon the previously published "A Private Eye" (Pym's etters & journals). Byrne fills in gaps, provides explanations, and gives more context. I especially enjoyed the inclusion of excerpts of Larkin's letters. Also, Pym's fascination with Germany during the Third Reich revealed Pym's blind romantic nature (which fades with time).

Pym lived through both world wars, into the sixties, and out again whilst writing autobiographical novels. Such a life, with so many changes.

Sometimes I read a biography of a writer whose work I enjoy only to discover their character leaves me empty or uninspired. Not so with this book. Pym, as a person, astute, funny, and ebullient, is an inspiration.

[Lelia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was such a disappointment. I had read Pym’s diaries and letters, A Very Private Eye, and wished a biographer would come along to fill in the blanks and give perspective on Pym’s life. Like everyone else who’s ever journaled, Pym wrote in her diary as if the present excitement or heartbreak was all-important and then time passed and the next experience consumed her attention. It can be hard to tell what’s of lasting import and what’s a passing fancy.

Well, according to Byrne everything is of lasting import. Each of Pym’s romances is elevated to the same fever pitch significance Pym felt in the moment. Byrne’s agenda seems to be to upend our opinion of Barbara Pym by revealing her to have been a passionate, sexually experienced woman, not simply one of the useful, “excellent women” we find in her books. The problem with Byrne’s approach is that if you’ve read Pym’s diaries - or been a woman - you’re not surprised that Pym was a sexual being, so Byrne’s attempts to sensationalize this just seem cheap.

Byrne makes statements like, “Nevertheless, whatever did happen caused much damage and pain. How lasting that pain was is difficult to estimate…” and “Barbara dealt with the Rupert incident by burying the memory” and “she had lost her virginity to him in a disturbing way, which she wiped from her diary, if not her memory.” But Byrne backs up this trauma drama only with the fact that Pym tore out the pages of her diary detailing her sexual encounter with Rupert and that Pym never used Rupert as the basis for a character. This kind of overstatement goes on for hundreds of pages with each of Barbara’s crushes.

Which gets to the first of a long list of beefs I have with this book. There’s a lot of telling not showing. She tends to distort information - not with outright lies, but by creating an impression that isn’t borne out if you happen to follow along in Pym’s diary entries. There’s also a lot that will bore you if you’ve read Pym’s diaries and letters because Byrne rephrases what Pym wrote, but in a less interesting way.

There’s a cloying quality to the chapter headings - I know Byrne is imitating picaresque novels, but it gets too cute and distracts from the life of Barbara Pym, which is what I wanted to be reading. Also, each chapter is about 4 pages long, as if Byrne is writing for 5th graders. She gives CliffsNotes summaries of Pym’s novels. I prefer biographers to give insights into novels that suggest I’m capable of intelligent thought.

It’s not well written. Here’s an example: “She kept occasional contact with Rupert, whose life continued to be touched by tragedy: his photograph, taken in the summer of 1932, is preserved in Pym’s papers, alongside a cut-out article from The Times announcing his marriage to a French woman.” You’re left to conclude that the tragedy that would haunt Rupert is having his photo among Pym’s papers and having married a French woman. If there were other tragedies, Byrne isn’t telling us what they are. But this pattern of dramatic statements followed by let-down - all within a single sentence - continues throughout the book.

She uses strange, inapt examples to flesh out our understanding of Pym’s life. More than a page of a 5 page chapter is spent describing Pillip Larkin’s experiences as a shy undergraduate ill-at-ease with his wealthy Oxford peers. Byrne follows this with, “Pym had no such fears about fitting in.”

I could go on and on. Every page of this book irritated me and, most disappointing of all, failed to do justice to Barbara Pym.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to fault this new biography of Barbara Pym, which looks into the crannies of Pym's life that the earlier biography, by Hazel Holt, failed to probe (possibly because Holt had been a close friend of Pym's, and Pym's younger sister was still alive at the time). Much attention has been given in the media to Pym's relationship with a Nazi officer and her supposed flirtation with National Socialism, but Byrne sensibly sees this episode in the context of its time. When Pym first went to Germany, she was still a student and had no reason to anticipate war or be aware of the undercurrents in German society and politics. At first I wasn't sure about the "picaresque" element in the format of the biography, but it does have the advantage of making the 600-page book an easy read. Many of Pym's "adventures" were failed love affairs, out of which she managed to make capital when she produced her popular novels. There are some things I would have liked to hear more about - what happened to her father after his second marriage, for example - and her childhood and even her relationship with her parents are somewhat glossed over. Nevertheless, this remains an accomplished work which clearly took a staggering amount of research to create. Pym fans will love it, and those who are not familiar with her work will be intrigued. Her literary career remains an inspiration to writers and her whole life is an example of how obstacles to happiness can be overcome by sheer force of character.

[Angela Varley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m very grateful to Net Galley and William Collins for a review copy of this book.
I enjoyed this new biography of Barbara Pym immensely, reading it alongside her popular novel ‘Excellent Women’. Not only does Paula Byrne describe Pym’s life from cradle to grave, but also offers insights into Pym’s writing practice.
I will be ordering my own copy of this delightful book and look forward to discovering more Pym novels as a result of reading about this unique novelist.

[Lydia Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only qualm with this book: Oswestry is in the Midlands - not the north!

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a review in The Week
I think I would have preferred to just read her diaries.

[Mary Pagones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biographer Paula Byrne’s biography of Barbara Pym begins with a scene from a pilgrimage, not to a religious site, but to Jane Austen’s cottage in Chawton. In 1969, novelist Barbara Pym—author of six critically praised novels about the romantic machinations and mundane details of ordinary people—pressed her hand upon Austen’s writing desk, willing some of Austen’s genius to rub off on her. The image is poignant, given Pym had then been unpublished for many years, and would be, until there was a revival of interest in her work in 1977. This was thanks to an article in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) which ultimately led to the publication of several additional novels, including the Booker-nominated Quartet in Autumn (1977) and what many regard as her masterpiece, The Sweet Dove Died (1978).

The length of Byrne’s 600+ page volume may seem daunting. Yet the book’s pages turn quickly, much like reading a Pym novel, especially if the reader has a fascination with the mundane details of pre- and post-war life. One constant throughout Byrne’s work is discussions of the type of foods Pym ate, the clothes Pym wore (nail varnish to tutorials at St. Hilda’s in Oxford, a pixie rain hat when visiting Keats’s house), and what Pym read. If you’re the type of person bored by such humble details as what really defines a person’s existence, you’re probably not much of a fan of Pym!

Unlike her mother, who kept ponies and chickens and was passionate about music, or her sister Hilary, who loved hockey and golf, Barbara Pym had two abiding passions for much of her life: books and boys. She wanted to be a novelist from a young age. She also openly created alternate personas (one, “Sandra,” was so well-known, her own family gave her a quilted evening bag with Sandra embroidered upon it as a gift) to separate her wild and unfettered sex life from her staider Barbara persona. It is one of the great ironies of the publishing industry that publishers would reject Barbara Pym for so many years—an unmarried woman who lost her virginity young in university and chased married and gay men—as insufficiently “swinging’” for the 60s.

However, this focus on literature and ordinary relationships is perhaps the crux of why Pym struggled to find a wider audience. Her books are not romances, mysteries, yet lack the experimental nature or social commentary of what intellectuals expect of so-called literary fiction. The literary podcast Backlisted, when praising another of her greatest novels (1952’s Excellent Women) called Pym un-blurbable. Pym’s books are neither driven by plot nor even romantic triangles very much (although there are many deeply unsatisfied married, unfaithful people and singletons in her works). Pym’s books are about unappreciated, unsatisfied people working dull jobs living in cheap flats with shared bathrooms, as they yearn for eternal. Or her characters obsess about the trivial while working for the Church of England or great universities. Pym’s subtlety in dealing with the limits of her character’s exterior and interior lives are one of the reasons she is so often compared with Austen, of course, and also why both authors are often criticized for leaving politics and sweeping themes out of their novels.

Pym’s own politics, though, make up the most disturbing portion of this biography. Although she later patriotically worked for the WRENs (enlisting in service in part to forget about being abandoned by a married man), in the 1930s she had an extended fling with a German Nazi. While antisemitism runs deep in British culture of the pre-and even postwar period (as any cursory reading of Nancy Mitford, Agatha Christie, or Georgette Heyer will reveal), not everyone dated a German Nazi and attended Hitler’s rallies before the war like Pym.

Byrne attributes this blindness to Pym’s romantic fascination with a man and German high culture, but this explanation is unlikely to satisfy all readers. Pym is praised for her frank treatment of gay relationships long before her contemporaries, but given these relationships are as stale and unfulfilling as her heterosexual ones, it’s always a question if Pym is calling for greater tolerance or just suggesting that human beings can’t communicate. There’s also a super-weird interlude where Barbara and Hilary basically stalked a gay male couple, finding out all they could about the two of them, giving the two gentlemen weird pet animal names. It’s not unlike how some people creep a stranger’s social media out of curiosity, but in a far more intrusive way (i.e., legwork and observation were involved).

However, given that this was a woman who wrote about caterpillars being found in cauliflower cheese and elderly women with a passionate hatred of all birds, perhaps a bit of eccentricity isn’t a total surprise.

[William Kuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book straight through to the end despite being annoyed by it.

The author has new material on Pym. I certainly got a stronger idea of her relationship history, and of the economic hardships she suffered as a mature woman.

The chapter titles are weak attempts at humor e.g. "In Which Pym Is Disappointed in Love ... Again!"

But I know how hard it is to sustain a long biographical enquiry and I admire what she's achieved.

[Lory Hess]

Even though it was filled with exhaustive detail, often drawn directly from Pym's diaries and notebooks (she loved the minutiae of daily life), this biography left me oddly uncertain of the underlying motivations and even the personality of its subject. I felt that I had encountered lots of externals but very little of her inner being. The narrative made it clear that Pym's life had been marked by a succession of attachments to unavailable, uncaring, or downright repellent men (including one Nazi!), yet I could never understand quite why she subjected herself to this treatment, nor what she ultimately made of it all. (It doesn't help that the most important pages from the diaries about some of her most traumatic or embarrassing experiences were ripped out and destroyed.)

Byrne argues that Pym "enjoyed sex" and this made her ahead of her time, that she was a liberated woman and that should encourage and inspire us readers, but it seems to me that this is the sort of liberation that frees MEN to enjoy a woman's favors without offering anything in return in the way of real love or commitment. It's sad, not inspiring.

This does not deter me from wanting to read Pym's novels; on the contrary. I now want to read all of them because I think that I'll find more of Pym's spirit there than in the biography. Her personal life may have all the more given her insight into human relationships, which is what has brought her a loyal and enduring base of fans. I have already enjoyed her first three novels, but now I'm especially interested in reading the later ones that come out of her maturity.