Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym was a well known writer - she was born in 1913 and died in 1980. As she grew older her novels did not do so well and she Her novels were deemed old fashioned and she had difficulty getting published. She did not publish anything from the early 60s until 1977, but she continued to write. She got a degree at Oxford in English, in the 1930s. She visited Germany quite often, then and was intially attracted by the novelty of Nazism. She fell in love with a young Nazi, but she afterwards realised that fascism was evil and recanted her sympathy. She joined the Womens naval service during the war, and worked censoring letters. After teh war, she took a post in the International African Institution and became an editor of their scholarly magazine about Africa and anthropology. She worked there till her retirement. She never married or had children, but she had several affairs. She lived with her sister Hilary in Queen's Park, London. In 1977, she was mentioned by 2 writers, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin as a very under rated writer. This sparked off new interest in her works and she published a new novel Quartet in Autumn. In the 1970's she developed breast cancer and then stomach cancer. She died in 1980. Her works are now quite popular, and she was one of the first writers to create sympathetic gay characters.