“Ever since Oxford, she had been sexually active and unashamed of being so. "She was one of the most liberated, independent women of her time,” writes Byrne. Recasting Pym's life as a picaresque novel, Byrne proceeds in chapters titled, for example, "In which Fräulein Pym falls for a Handsome Nazi" and "Miss Pym the Novelist takes Tea with the Distinguished Author Elizabeth Bowen in the Company of Several Homosexuals." Pym's gift for writing was matched by her gift for living, and she funneled into her novels her experiences at Oxford in the 1930s (a chauvinist world, where she nonetheless had a blast) in Nazi Germany (late in grasping what was going on there, she made a timely and full recovery) and as a Wren and a censor in World War II. In her latest, acclaimed literary biographer Byrne delivers a buoyant account of the life of Barbara Pym (1913-1980), taking her title from the one Pym gave her own diaries, a wealth of previously unmined material. A detailed, definitive reconstruction of the British novelist’s life and career.
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