Barbara Pym received by far her greatest acclaim, which included frequent comparisons between her work and that of Jane Austen, just prior to and after the end of her life. Her early novels were published with modest success; after her publisher's...

Barbara Pym was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, the elder daughter of Frederic Crampton and Irene Thomas Pym. She was educated at a private school in Liverpool and at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied English literature and took a B.A. with...

BARBARA PYM's novels have attracted many loyal readers since they began to appeal in the early 1950s. Her bittersweet comedies of manners chronicle the ordinary pleasures and frustrations of educated, middle-class women and men. Invariably they are citizens of close-knit communities: English villages...

CIVIL TO STRANGERS and Other Writings, by Barbara Pym. Dutton. 388 pp. $18.95. Barbara Pym, late in life, gave her definition of the kind of immortality most authors would want, "To feel that their work would be immediately recognisable as having been written...

In the following essay, Kennard considers comparisons between Pym and Jane Austen, concluding that, unlike Austen, Pym subverts the traditional romance plot by focusing on older, unmarried female characters who take pleasure in the mundane realities of ordinary life.

In the following essay, Doan examines Pym's portrayal of unmarried women as a reflection of the author's personal struggle to reconcile her own feelings about marriage and sexuality. Doan describes Pym's version of spinsterhood as "an alternative life-style which offers women an active role in society and allows them the opportunity to examine others critically."

In the following essay, Sadler considers Pym's depiction of unmarried women and male characters in her novels. "In the Pym world," Sadler concludes, "bores and boors can be male and female, and men can out-spinster spinsters."