Publisher's Synopsis
Long admired by readers for her wit, incisiveness, and comic flair, Barbara Pym has only begun to receive serious critical attention in recent years. In this critical biography, Anne Wyatt-Brown shows how Pym's transformation of everyday experiences into art allowed her to triumph over her social and emotional environments.;Whereas most literary biographies concentrate on the productive years of their subjects, this book takes a wider view, examining both the early influence of reading and the later effects of ageing on Pym's creative development and on her career. Combining psychoanalytic insights, literary analysis, and gerontological and writing theories, Wyatt-Brown provides a deeper understanding of Pym's work. Reading Pym's novels in the context of her letters, diaries and early manuscripts, Wyatt-Brown examines the forces that hindered Pym's early career and disrupted her success at midlife, when she became discouraged by her inability to extend her readership. Ironically, in her last years, ill-health provided Pym with a new subject and unexpectedly salvaged her foundering career.;Wyatt-Brown also argues that gender plays an important role in Pym's novels. Pym wrote from the perspective of marginal women who, despite education and cultivation, felt they have no recognisable role to play in the modern world. Spinsterhood kept Pym on the fringes of society, according to Wyatt-Brown, and it was only Pym's extraordinary creativity that allowed her to transcend her situation.
