 First edition | |
| Author | Barbara Pym |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
Publication date | 1986 (1st edition) |
| Media type | Print (hardbound) |
| Pages | 190 (1st edition) |
An Academic Question is a novel by Barbara Pym, written in the early 1970s and published posthumously in 1986.
Caroline 'Caro' Grimstone is the wife of a sociology lecturer in a small West Country university town. While her husband Alan is fascinated by dinner party discussions of African anthropology and minor academic points, Caro is growing tired of the dull town and her pale marriage, and feels unfulfilled by her position as the mother of their 4-year-old daughter Kate. She undertakes voluntary work at a nursing home, reading to an elderly and nearly blind retired missionary, the Reverend Stillingfleet. Alan realises that Stillingfleet possesses an unpublished manuscript in their shared field of anthropology. Concerned that the manuscript will be lost – or, worse, bequeathed to a rival – Alan accompanies his wife on one of her visits to read to Stillingfleet and steals the manuscript, which allows him to write a ground-breaking paper.
Caro begins to regret the theft, and to develop suspicions that Alan is having an affair with a colleague, Iris Horniblow. She seeks the guidance of her friends Kitty, a self-absorbed English woman who has spent much of her adult life in the Caribbean, Kitty's effete, gossipy son Coco, and her sister Dolly, a spinster who cares for a large family of hedgehogs in her back garden. Alan admits that he has had a fling with the assistant editor of the journal that is publishing the article that owes so much to Stillingfleet's manuscript.
Caro goes to stay with her mother and then with her sister, and then returns home. The fling fades into the background and the marriage resumes its course. The manuscript, which has caused so much chaos, is clandestinely returned by Caro to 'the Stillingfleet collection', but then destroyed in a fire started accidentally by (mildly) protesting students on Bonfire Night.
Pym commenced writing the novel in 1970 and completed the first draft in 1971. Pym's last novel had been published in 1961, and she had been rejected by publishers since. At the time, Pym had no expectations for her "academic novel", writing "[p]erhaps my immediate circle of friends will like to read it". Pym intended the novel to be "a sort of Margaret Drabble effort", [1] but it turned out much differently and she was ultimately dissatisfied with the novel. She put it aside and never revised it. [2]
Pym left two drafts of An Academic Question, one as a first-person narrative and one in the third person. After Pym's death, her literary executor Hazel Holt revised the work for publication from a combination of the two drafts. [3] The novel was published posthumously in 1986, by Macmillan in England and E. P. Dutton in the United States. The novel was released as an audiobook in the 1980s by Chivers Press, read by Angela Pleasence. The novel was published in Germany in 1991 as Die Frau des Professors (The Professor's Wife), in France in 1992 as Une Question Purement Académique, and in Italy in 2019 as Una questione accademica.
The novel received mixed reviews, with most acknowledging its status as a draft. Kirkus Reviews called it "minor but still intriguing... on occasion, deliriously funny". [4] The New York Times called the novel "one of Pym's paler efforts" but noted that Pym remained "one of the most engaging novelists of this century". [5]
Pym's novels routinely feature characters from her previous works. The characters of Sister Dew from An Unsuitable Attachment and Digby Fox from Less than Angels reappear. Most notably, this novel features the memorial service for Esther Clovis, a character who had appeared in three previous Pym novels starting with Excellent Women . The memorial service is seen from the point of view of Caro Grimstone, who did not know Miss Clovis and thus is attempting to piece together the woman's personality from the details of her service. The memorial service will be seen a second time, from a different perspective, in Pym's final novel A Few Green Leaves .
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In the 1950s she published a series of social comedies, of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). In 1977 her career was revived when the critic Lord David Cecil and the poet Philip Larkin both nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century. Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year, and she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Excellent Women is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1952, her second published novel and generally acclaimed as the funniest and most successful of her comedies of manners.
Quartet in Autumn is a novel by British novelist Barbara Pym, first published in 1977. It was highly praised and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the top literary prize in the UK. This was considered a comeback novel for Pym; she had fallen out of favour as styles changed, and her work had been rejected by publishers for 15 years. This followed her successful record as a novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s. As a novel, it represents a departure from her earlier style of light comedy, as it is the story of four office workers on the verge of retirement.
Some Tame Gazelle is Barbara Pym's first novel, originally published in 1950.
No Fond Return of Love is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1961.
(John) Robert Liddell was an English literary critic, biographer, novelist, travel writer and poet.
Hazel Holt was a British novelist.
Less Than Angels is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1955.
A Glass of Blessings is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1958. It deals with the growing estrangement of a well-to-do married couple and the means by which harmony is restored.
Crampton Hodnet is a comic novel by Barbara Pym, published posthumously in 1985, and originally written in 1940.
The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.
An Unsuitable Attachment is a novel by Barbara Pym, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 1982.
The Sweet Dove Died is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1978. The title is a quotation from a poem, "I Had a Dove", by John Keats.
Jane and Prudence is the third novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1953.
St Michael and All Angels Church is a Grade II listed Church of England church in Barnes in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. It is located at 39 Elm Bank Gardens, London SW13 0NX.
Honor Ellen Wyatt was an English journalist and radio presenter, known for her association with Barbara Pym, Robert Graves, and Laura Riding as well as for her own work. She was the mother of the actor Julian Glover and the musician Robert Wyatt.
Civil to Strangers and Other Writings is a collection of novels and short stories by Barbara Pym, published posthumously.
A Few Green Leaves is the final novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1980, the year of Pym's death. Although several novels were published posthumously, A Few Green Leaves was the final novel she worked on.
A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters is a 1984 publication of writings by the English novelist Barbara Pym. Released after Pym's death, the volume was edited by Pym's sister Hilary and her literary executor Hazel Holt.
A Lot To Ask: A Life of Barbara Pym is a 1990 biography of the English novelist Barbara Pym. The author, Hazel Holt, worked with Pym in the 1950s at the International African Institute in London before embarking on her own literary career. The pair remained friends, and Holt functioned as Pym's literary executor after the latter's death from breast cancer in 1980.
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