October 2020: Quartet in Autumn
Shortlisted for 1977's Booker Prize, Barbara Pym's beautifully observed and darkly comic novel concerns four eccentric characters - Letty, Marcia, Edwin and Norman - who have worked in an office together for years, but have resisted friendship until now, as retirement looms ...
Quartet in Autumn shows Barbara Pym's sensitive artistry at its most sparkling. Its world is both extraordinary and familiar, revealing the eccentricities of everyday life.
About the author
Barbara Pym was born in Shropshire on 2nd June 1930.
After studying English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, Barbara Pym served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II. From 1950 to 1961, she published 6 novels, but her 7th was declined by the publisher due to a change in the reading public's tastes.
The turning point for Pym came with a famous article in the 1975 Times Literary Supplement in which two prominent names, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Her comeback novel, Quartet in Autumn, was nominated for the Booker Prize.
Pym considered Aldous Huxley and Jane Austen to be her literary influences.
Book Details
Paperback: 208 pages
ISBN: 1447289617
Publisher: Picador; Main Market Edition (8 Oct. 2015)