A Glass Of Blessings

BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY CLARE CHAMBERS 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN 'My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy, as though I were meeting an old, dear friend' JILLY COOPER 'The subtlest of her books . . . the sparkle on first acquaintance has been succeeded by the deeper brilliance of established art' PHILIP LARKIN Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good-looking and fairly young - but very bored. Her staid husband Rodney, a civil servant, is slightly balder and fatter than he once was. Wilmet would like to think she has changed rather less. Her conventional life takes a turn when she meets the handsome brother of a close friend. Attractive, cultured and attentive, Piers Longridge is a delectable mystery Wilmet is determined to solve.

Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was born in Oswestry, Shropshire. She was educated at Huyton College, Liverpool, and St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she gained an Honours Degree in English Language and Literature. From 1958-1974, she worked as an editorial secretary at the International African Institute. Her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, was published in 1950, and was followed by Excellent Women (1952), Jane and Prudence (1953), Less than Angels (1955), A Glass of Blessings (1958) and No Fond Return of Love (1961). During the sixties and early seventies her writing suffered a partial eclipse and, discouraged, she concentrated on her work for the Institute, from which she retired in 1974 to live in Oxfordshire. A renaissance in her fortunes came in 1977, when both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil chose her as one of the most underrated novelists of the century. With astonishing speed, she emerged, after sixteen years of obscurity, to almost instant fame and recognition. Quartet in Autumn was published in 1977 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Sweet Dove Died followed in 1978, and A Few Green Leaves was published posthumously. Barbara Pym died in January 1980.