Pym, Barbara (1913–1980)

English novelist. Born Barbara Mary Crampton Pym on June 2, 1913, in Oswestry, Shropshire, England; died of cancer on January 11, 1980, in Oxford, England; daughter of Frederic Crampton Pym (a solicitor) and Irena Spenser Pym; educated at Liverpool College and a private boarding school in Huyton; St. Hilda's College, Oxford, B.A. in English literature.

Selected writings:

Some Tame Gazelle (1950); Excellent Women (1952); Jane and Prudence (1953); Less Than Angels (1955); A Glass of Blessings (1958); No Fond Return of Love (1961); Quartet in Autumn (1977); The Sweet Dove Died (1978); A Few Green Leaves (1980); An Unsuitable Attachment (1982); A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters (1984); Crampton Hodnet (1985); An Academic Question (1986); Civil to Strangers and Other Writings (1988).

Barbara Pym transported readers of her novels of manners into England's drawing rooms to meet largely ordinary people doing largely ordinary things. But her ability to see the humor and irony in such everyday events ultimately brought her success as an author. She published her first novel in 1950 while in her late 30s, then seemingly made up for lost time, bringing five more to market in the next decade. In the 1960s and 1970s, interest in Pym's work all but dried up, and after a number of rejections from publishers, she abandoned writing for a time. Toward the end of her life, in the late 1970s, a positive evaluation of her work in the Times Literary Supplement triggered a resurgence in demand for her writing, and before her death in 1980 she saw the publication of her new work as well as the reprinting of earlier novels.

She was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, on June 2, 1913, the first child of Frederic Crampton Pym and Irena Spenser Pym . Frederic, a solicitor, had practiced law elsewhere in Shropshire—notably Shrewsbury and Wellington—until setting up his practice in Oswestry after Irena, a native of the village, agreed to marry him. The couple were living at 72 Willow Street in Oswestry when Barbara was born. In 1916, Barbara was followed by another daughter, Hilary Pym , at which time the family was living at Welsh Walls. The home that the girls grew up in was Morda Lodge, which Hilary described as "a substantial, square red-brick Edwardian house with a large garden on the outskirts of the town on the way to Morda."

The two Pym sisters enjoyed what Hilary has characterized as "a happy, unclouded childhood," a sizable portion of which was devoted to spiritual matters. Their mother was an assistant organist at the parish church of St. Oswald, and their father sang bass in the church choir. Barbara and Hilary both attended children's services at the church on Sunday afternoons. Of their mother, Hilary recalled, "it was she who encouraged Barbara to write and me to draw, and I'm sure it was her determination that sent us away to boarding school rather than continue our education in Oswestry." At age 12, Barbara was enrolled as a boarding student at Liverpool College in Huyton, where she later served as chair of the Literary Society. While in Huyton, at the age of 16 she wrote her first novel, Young Men in Fancy Dress, which was never published. She also wrote poems and parodies. Six years later, Pym began college-level studies at St. Hilda's in Oxford, majoring in English literature. After finishing her studies, she lived for a time at home and then accepted a teaching position in Poland which she held until 1938. When World War II broke out, Pym first worked as a postal censor in Bristol. Later, as a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service, she was stationed for a time in the United Kingdom and then in Naples, Italy.

Returning to London after the war, Pym went to work with the International African Institute,

where she would be employed from 1946 until 1974. She worked first as a research assistant and later as assistant editor of the institute's journal Africa. In 1950, Pym published her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, for which she had earlier collected a number of rejection slips. She had begun work on this novel while still in college at Oxford. Two years later came Excellent Women, followed by Jane and Prudence (1953), Less Than Angels (1955), A Glass of Blessings (1958), and No Fond Return of Love (1961). Her work found a loyal, if not large, following.

But during the 1960s and into the 1970s, publishers showed no interest in Pym's work, prompting what The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers has characterized as "a period of painful neglect and a decline in her reputation." A new chief editor at Jonathan Cape, the publishing house that had brought out her first six novels, rejected An Unsuitable Attachment in 1963 because "in present conditions we could not sell a sufficient number of copies to cover costs." Also rejected by a number of publishers was The Sweet Dove Died. Pym even attempted to market some of her novels under the pseudonym Tom Pym, but to no avail. Finally, discouraged by the continued rejections, she stopped writing. Retiring from the International African Institute in 1974, she moved with her sister Hilary and a cat named Minerva to a home in Finstock, Oxfordshire.

In 1977, the Times Literary Supplement published a list of writers whom contemporary critics felt were the most underrated or overrated of the century. Both poet Philip Larkin and critic Lord David Cecil selected Pym, the only writer to be named twice, as most underrated. This set off a rebirth of interest in her work. New editions of some of Pym's earlier novels began to appear, and publishers were once again eager to see her as yet unpublished efforts. The first book by Pym to appear after the "rediscovery" was Quartet in Autumn (1977). Published the following year was The Sweet Dove Died, followed in 1980 by A Few Green Leaves, which Pym finished only a short time before she died of cancer on January 11, 1980, at age 66. A number of her novels, as well as a collection of her letters and diary entries, were published posthumously. These included An Unsuitable Attachment (1982), A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters (1984), Crampton Hodnet (1985), An Academic Question (1986), and Civil to Strangers and Other Writings (1988).

sources:

Binding, Paul. "Barbara Pym," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 14: British Novelists Since 1960. Jay L. Halio, ed. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1983.

Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters. Edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym. NY: Dutton, 1984.

Shattock, Joanne, ed. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. NY: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Don Amerman , freelance writer, Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania