The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne

 One of the main reasons for Pym's many rejections was the closure of the commercial circulating libraries, where for a small fee readers could rent out books at a time when buying books was still costly.  This had been the key not only to Pym's own voracious consumption of fiction as a young woman, but also to her wide readership back in the fifties.                                                                       -- Paula Byrne, The Adventures of Miss Barara Pym (William Collins, 2021)

It is always a pleasure to discover a new writer whose books give one pleasure.  I first heard of Barbara Pym in Alison Light's review of Byrne's biography in "The London Review of Books" 29 July 2021 and have now posted comments about three of her novels on this blog.  Pym published six books from 1950 to 1961 and then faced only rejection from not only her own publisher but more than twenty others to whom she submitted manuscripts; she was considered old-fashioned and her books were not considered particularly profitable (if Byrne unearthed any actual sales figures for Pym's books she doesn't share them with us). Finally Pym was able to get additional books published after "The Times Literary Supplement" did a survey in 1977 of the most under-rated and most over-rated novels of the 20th century and Pym's name was the only one listed as under-rated by two of the people surveyed, Philip Larkin(who had long been a supporter) and Lord David Cecil, English professor at Oxford (from which Pym had graduated). Pym died in 1980 and had four books published posthumously that had not been accepted by a publisher.

As fascinating and beautifully written as Byrne's book is and as useful as she found Pym's diaries (from which she quotes frequently) -- she has been very influenced by Pym's style -- it remains a question as to how important the life of a writer is to the understanding and appreciation of her work.  There is a great deal of information in Byrne's book about Pym's Nazi lover as well as her many failed relationships with men, who were often homosexual, married or otherwise unavailable. I read biographies of artists because I am fascinated about their ability to accomplish so much in this world that defeats the efforts of many of us.  Pym had a particularly complex life, filled with happiness as well as sadness, but she managed in her novels to create a world of her own, filled with requited and unrequited love in a small slice of England, with characters vividly alive.