Barbara Pym

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Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (born June 2, 1913 in Oswestry , Shropshire , † January 11, 1980 in Oxford ) was an English writer . She is best known for her moral novel, Excellent Women , which appeared in 1952. In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels .

Life

Barbara Pym was the eldest daughter of lawyer Frederick Crampton Pym and his wife Irena Spenser Thomas. She studied English literature at St Hilda's College of Oxford University . It was there that she met Robert Liddell , with whom she had an eventful friendship. After her studies, she lived mostly in her parents' home, a stay with a family in Katowice , Poland, where she was supposed to teach English , which began in 1938 , was broken off prematurely due to political developments.

After the outbreak of World War II , she initially volunteered in Oswestry, was then hired by the Bristol Censorship Authority in October 1941 , and from 1943 to 1946 she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service (WREN). As part of this activity, she was transferred to Naples in 1944 , where she stayed until the end of the war. After the war, she took a position at the International African Institute in London , which she held until 1974.

In 1950 - after some revisions - her first novel Some Tame Gazelle was published, which she had already written when she was twenty-two. By 1961 another five novels were published by her, which were positively received by literary criticism and had a loyal readership. However, their unexcited subjects and their deceptively mild irony no longer seemed to fit the time and An Unsuitable Attachment (written 1963) could no longer be published because it was feared that this type of novel would no longer be able to win a readership. A long phase followed, in which self-doubt, resignation and the consideration of only wanting to write for a few good friends replaced one another. In 1971 she was finally diagnosed with breast cancer and initially successfully operated on

But in 1977 the tide turned. In January, the Times Literary Supplement asked major literary figures who was the most underrated writer of the century. Her name was the only one mentioned twice, by Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil . With that she became well known. Her novel Quartet in Autumn was published by Macmillan that same year and was then nominated for the Booker Prize . In the last three years of her life, Barbara Pym was able to enjoy many of the honors that go hand in hand with successful authorship: her novels have been reprinted in both Great Britain and America, she has been interviewed repeatedly for newspaper articles and radio reports. The BBC dedicated a charming portrait to her with the television program Tea with Miss Pym , which showed her life in her little house in Finstock near Oxford, where she had lived with her sister and cats since she retired. In 1979 she was made a member of the Royal Society of Literature .

In 1979 the cancer broke out again and did not respond to treatments. In the care of her younger sister, she finished her last novel, but did not live long enough to read the proofs. She died on January 11, 1980 at Churchill Hospital, Oxford and was buried in Holy Trinity Cemetery, Einstock.

classification

In a review of her last novel, the British literary critic and novelist AN Wilson wondered why Barbara Pym's novels were still worth reading decades after their publication, when so many works by other authors were already outdated or unrealistic to the reader, although they were more recent or literary be more daring. In answer to this question, Philip Larkin wrote that the timelessness of her works was not due solely to Barbary Pym's keen observation and her keen sense of the ridiculousness of life. Pym was also aware of the painfulness of the small everyday challenges and the courage that it takes to face them every day.

Works

  • Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
  • Excellent Women (1952); German: Excellent women
  • 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)
  • Crampton Hodnet (completed 1940, published 1985)
  • An Unsuitable Attachment (written 1963; published posthumously, 1982)
  • An Academic Question (written 1970-72; published 1986)

literature

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Alexander McCall Smith: Very Barbara Pym , The Guardian, April 5, 2008, accessed March 5, 2016
  2. ↑ The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? The Guardian , accessed March 5, 2016
  3. ^ A b c Larkin: Pym, Barbara Mary Crampton in John Sutherland (ed.): Literary Lives - Intimate Biographies of the Famous by the Famous . P. 276.
  4. ^ A b c Larkin: Pym, Barbara Mary Crampton in John Sutherland (ed.): Literary Lives - Intimate Biographies of the Famous by the Famous . P. 277.
  5. ^ A b Larkin: Pym, Barbara Mary Crampton in John Sutherland (ed.): Literary Lives - Intimate Biographies of the Famous by the Famous . P. 278.
personal data
SURNAME Pym, Barbara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pym, Barbara Mary Crampton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Oswestry , Shropshire
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1980
Place of death Oxford