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The Making of Barbara Pym

Oxford, the War Years, and Post-war Austerity

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Emily Stockard

    1. Department of English, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA

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  • Offers new insights into Barbara Pym’s formative years as a writer
  • Explores Pym’s fictional treatment of Britain’s post-war austerity and focuses on social roles as avenues for change
  • Includes new archival material

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 1-14

  3. Elements of Continuity: Youth and the Oxford Years

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 15-69

  4. The War Years: Surprising Continuities

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 71-118

  5. Crampton Hodnet: The Continuous Cycle

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 119-141

  6. Some Tame Gazelle: Continuity and Contentment

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 143-163

  7. Excellent Women: A Continuous Role

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 165-198

  8. Jane and Prudence: The End of Austerity

    • Emily Stockard
    Pages 199-220

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 221-234
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Keywords

About this book

The Making of Barbara Pym offers new insights into Pym’s formative years as a writer, during which she honed a complex view of the necessity of change on individual and cultural levels. Supported by newly published archival material, this comprehensive study of Pym’s early work explores her personal and fictional pre-war and wartime writing, including unpublished and posthumously published works, before looking closely at Some Tame Gazelle and Excellent Women, published during Britain’s post-war austerity period. Of central importance is a new recognition of Pym’s use of social roles, particularly those of women, as proper avenues for change. The book traces how Pym came to devise characters whose individual development can be seen as analogous to or representative of larger cultural movements. Pym uses the spinster figure to embody the forward-looking cultural perspectives that she endorsed and then, finally, in Jane and Prudence, to figure the end of Britain’s austerity period.

Reviews

“It is always a treat to welcome a new book about Barbara Pym, especially one that is written so well: free of what Henry James referred to as the 'shackles of theory,' aimed at the general literate reader, and above all, delivered passionately in the author’s own voice. A generous helping of extracts from Pym’s notebooks and commonplace book, heretofore unpublished, along with new insights into the early years of the developing writer, offer a fresh perspective from which Prof. Stockard explores 'change' as an important developing theme. The Making of Barbara Pym: Oxford, the War Years, and Post-War Austerity is a fine book on many levels.” 

--Dale Salwak, Professor of English, Citrus College, USA and editor of The Life and Work of Barbara Pym

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA

    Emily Stockard

About the author

Emily Stockard is Associate Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University, USA. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has taught classes in British literature, from Chaucer to the 18th century. She has published on 16th and 17th-century poetry and drama and, most recently, on Denton Welch and Barbara Pym.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Making of Barbara Pym

  • Book Subtitle: Oxford, the War Years, and Post-war Austerity

  • Authors: Emily Stockard

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83868-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83867-6Published: 11 November 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-83870-6Published: 12 November 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-83868-3Published: 10 November 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 234

  • Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, Fiction, British Culture

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