An acidly funny novel about a woman who falls for a much younger man by one of Britain's great writers of social comedy, now back in print.
A lesser-known, darker sister to Barbara Pym's Excellent Women.
The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent towards everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James.
Leonora’s possession of James is challenged, however, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym’s sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart.
“Faultless.” —The Guardian
“Byrne [Pym's biographer] wisely judges Pym’s masterpiece to be not Excellent Women, the conventional choice, but The Sweet Dove Died . . . A fearless novel.” —Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker
“Her characters are all meticulously impaled on the delicate pins of a wit that is as scrupulous as it is deadly.” —The Observer
“A coldly funny book.” —The Telegraph
“Highly distinctive.... [T]he critics who have recently insisted on Miss Pym’s too long neglected gifts have not been wrong.” —The Financial Times
Barbara Pym (1913–1980) was born in Shropshire and educated at Oxford. After serving in the censorship office and the Women's Royal Navy Service during World War II, she worked at the International African Institute in London and served as an editor of the journal Africa until her retirement in 1974. She wrote her first novel, Some Time Gazelle, in the 1930s. It took many years to find a publisher. Five more novels appeared in the fifties and early sixties, and then, though she never stopped writing, sixteen years passed before the publication of her late masterpieces, Quartet in Autumn, The Sweet Dove Died, and A Few Green Leaves (published posthumously).
Susie Boyt is the author of seven novels and the memoir My Judy Garland Life, which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse, and serialized on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life, and fashion for the Financial Times for many years and recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James.
An acidly funny novel about a woman who falls for a much younger man by one of Britain's great writers of social comedy, now back in print.
A lesser-known, darker sister to Barbara Pym's Excellent Women.
The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent towards everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James.
Leonora’s possession of James is challenged, however, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym’s sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart.
Reviews
“Faultless.” —The Guardian
“Byrne [Pym's biographer] wisely judges Pym’s masterpiece to be not Excellent Women, the conventional choice, but The Sweet Dove Died . . . A fearless novel.” —Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker
“Her characters are all meticulously impaled on the delicate pins of a wit that is as scrupulous as it is deadly.” —The Observer
“A coldly funny book.” —The Telegraph
“Highly distinctive.... [T]he critics who have recently insisted on Miss Pym’s too long neglected gifts have not been wrong.” —The Financial Times
Author
Barbara Pym (1913–1980) was born in Shropshire and educated at Oxford. After serving in the censorship office and the Women's Royal Navy Service during World War II, she worked at the International African Institute in London and served as an editor of the journal Africa until her retirement in 1974. She wrote her first novel, Some Time Gazelle, in the 1930s. It took many years to find a publisher. Five more novels appeared in the fifties and early sixties, and then, though she never stopped writing, sixteen years passed before the publication of her late masterpieces, Quartet in Autumn, The Sweet Dove Died, and A Few Green Leaves (published posthumously).
Susie Boyt is the author of seven novels and the memoir My Judy Garland Life, which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse, and serialized on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life, and fashion for the Financial Times for many years and recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James.
