PYM, Barbara.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Excellent Women. First edition, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Margaret and Roger Till, with all good wishes from Barbara Pym (a reward for perseverance 3.7.76)", and signed by her on the half-title, with her printed name struck through.The Tills were fans of the author during her "wilderness years". Pym was hugely popular during the 1950s, but when she submitted her seventh novel to Cape in 1963, Tom Maschler rejected the work. She was advised that her writing was too old-fashioned, and her works fell out of print. Her career was revived in 1977 when both David Cecil and Philip Larkin nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century.Excellent Women was the most acclaimed of Pym's comedies of manners, published at the height of her popularity in 1952. Pym has inscribed this copy in 1976, the year before she was rediscovered.

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