The Testing of Barbara Pym: London, the Wilderness Years, and the Rewards of Age (1st ed. 2023)

By: Emily Stockard

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Synopsis: The Testing of Barbara Pym, a companion volume to The Making of Barbara Pym (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), completes a comprehensive analysis of Pym’s novels and her life, focusing on her complex view of the necessity of change at both the individual and cultural levels. Newly published archival material supports this treatment of Pym’s vision of a changing world – a vision premised upon the principle of continuity, a linking together of past, present, and future. In her novels published from 1955-1980, beginning with Britain’s emergence from post-war austerity, Pym portrays, in an optimistic fashion, several changing aspects of British culture: expansion of the suburbs, acceptance of homosexual men, erosion of the class system, inclusivity in the Anglican Church. But with these changes, new strains emerge as well; the principle of continuity undergoes radical testing and is then emphatically reasserted. Likewise, despite upheavals to established patterns in her life, chiefly the inability to publish her work, Pym persisted in cultivating such elements of continuity as she could, an effort rewarded, while she was in rural retirement, by a return to the publishing world. Thus, in both Pym’s novels and her life, continuity survives the duress of testing circumstances.