Barbara Pym

When Barbara Pym died in 1980 she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, CIVIL TO STRANGERS, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a Voice', Pym's only written commentary on her writing career. In CIVIL TO STRANGERS the lives of a young couple, …

Caroline Grimstone, the bored young wife of an ambitious anthropologist, finds a cure for her tedium in reading to the elderly and becoming a party to her husband's purloining of an important manuscript

Less Than Angels is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1955. The novel is largely concerned with the activities of a group of anthropologists, and is to some extent based on the author's own experiences working at the African Institute in London. It is set in a period of social change which is subtly …