Barbara Pym

The author of Excellent Women explores female friendship and the quiet yearnings of British middle-class life—a literary delight for fans of Jane Austen.
 Jane Cleveland and Prudence Bates were close friends at Oxford University, but now live very different lives. Forty-one-year-old Jane lives in the country, is married to a vicar, has a daughter she adores, and lives a very proper life in a very proper English parish....

Barbara Pym's first novel offers a self-assured slice of village life as it takes us into the lives of two sisters living in post–World War II England Belinda and Harriet Bede live together in a small English village. Shy, sensible Belinda has been secretly in love with Henry Hoccleve-the poetry-spouting, married archdeacon of their church-for thirty years. Belinda's much more confident, forthright younger sister Harriet, meanwhile, is ardently...

Barbara Pym's early novel takes us into 1950s England, as seen through the funny, engaging, yearning eyes of a restless housewife Wilmet Forsyth is bored. Bored with the everyday routine of her life. Bored with teatimes filled with local gossip. Bored with her husband, Rodney, a civil servant who dotes on her. But on her thirty-third birthday, Wilmet's conventional life takes a turn when she runs into the handsome brother of her close friend.   Attractive...

Two literary romantic novels from the New York Times–bestselling author of Excellent Women. Less Than Angels: In a story that explores the mating habits of humans, magazine writer Catherine Oliphant lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow-until he announces he's leaving her for a nineteen-year-old student. Though stunned by the betrayal, Catherine becomes fascinated by another anthropologist: a reclusive eccentric recently returned from...

Rupert Stonebird, bachelor anthropologist, moves to a new parish and gradually finds himself becoming interested in the vicar's sister-in-law.