The Narrative Sense of Barbara Pym

Abstract

I wanted to buy a copy of Some Tame Gazelle, the quintessential gift for a friend about to leave for the International Women’s Conference in Kenya. Peopled by an irrepressible spinster, an ungallant bishop resting in England from the rigours of his African mission, and Oxford librarians who had, unbelievably, dunned tribal chiefs for contributions to the university libraries, Barbara Pym’s first published novel offered the marvellous excesses of a Wodehouse or Henry Green and the bitter-sweet realities of a Coppard, Bates or Ashton-Warner. The novel was out of stock, but the assistant assured me that there were other Pym novels on the shelves. ‘We try not to run out. Those books are really in demand. Oh, but I love to read Barbara Pym, and you’re going to like this novel; it’s her latest.’

‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’¹

The author wishes to acknowledge the National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant which provided research support for this essay.