Business As Usual (Handheld Classics Ser.)
Synopsis
Business As Usual (1933) by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford is a delightful illustrated novel in letters from Hilary Fane. She is an Edinburgh librarian who is determined to support herself by her own earnings in London for a year, despite the mutterings of her surgeon fiancé. After a nervous beginning looking for a job while her savings shrink, she finds work as a typist in the London department store of Everyman's (a very thin disguise for Selfridges). She rises rapidly through the ranks to the books department, and then the library, where she has to enforce modern systems on her entrenched and frosty manager.Business as Usual is charming, intelligent, heart-warming, funny, and entertaining. It’s a fascinating record of library history and of shopping in the 1930s, and for its unflinching descriptions of social conditions, women’s poverty and illegitimacy.
‘Jane Oliver’ was the pen-name of Helen Evans (1903-1970). Formerly a PE teacher, a pilot, and Clemence Dane’s secretary, Helen met her co-author Ann Stafford (the pen-name of Anne Pedler, 1900-1966) when working at the Times Book Club. Business as Usual was their first joint novel: together and as solo authors they published at least ninety-seven books. They founded the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in memory of Helen’s husband.
Book details
- Author:
- Jane Oliver, Ann Stafford
- ISBN:
- 9781912766192
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781912766185
- Publisher:
- Handheld Press
- Pages:
- 268
- Reading age:
- Not specified
- Includes images:
- Yes
- Date of addition:
- 2020-11-10
- Usage restrictions:
- Copyright
- Copyright date:
- 1933
- Copyright by:
- The Estates of Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Categories:
- Humor, Literature and Fiction