 First edition | |
| Author | Barbara Pym |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
Publication date | 1982 (1st edition) |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardbound) |
| Pages | 262 (1st edition) |
An Unsuitable Attachment is a novel by Barbara Pym, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 1982. [1]
Ianthe Broome is a well-bred librarian in her mid-thirties who has been left in comfortable circumstances by her late parents, so that she is able to buy a house in an up-and-coming London suburb. A new neighbour is Rupert Stonebird, an anthropologist. Both attend the local church, St Basil’s, and get to know the vicar and his wife, Mark and Sophia Ainger (and their cat Faustina). Sophia would like her younger sister Penelope to find a husband; she regards Rupert as a suitable candidate and Ianthe as a possible rival.
Mervyn Cantrell, the head of the library at which Ianthe works, appoints a new library assistant, John Challow, five years younger than Ianthe and from a lower social class. He is attracted to Ianthe, but Ianthe is conscious of their dissimilarities, and in any case ‘did not like men very much, except for the clergy’.
Mark and Sophia take a small group of parishioners, including Ianthe, to Rome. Penelope is also of the party. Rupert is at a conference in Perugia at the same time, and joins the group in Rome afterwards, thereby seeing more of Ianthe and Penelope. Sophia invites Ianthe to accompany her on a visit to her aunt’s villa near Naples. Being apart from John makes Ianthe realise that she loves him.
Back at work, Ianthe receives an unexpected proposal of marriage from Mervyn, whose ‘love’ arises from his envy of her furniture. Rupert too begins to court Ianthe, and she confesses that she loves someone else. John visits Ianthe to return some money she had lent him, and they declare their mutual love. They become engaged, scandalising some of her friends and family. At the wedding, Rupert resolves to ask Penelope out.
This novel is notable as the first of Pym's novels to be rejected by publishers after she had established herself as a novelist. [2] Pym completed the novel in February 1963 and sent it to Jonathan Cape, who had published all six of her previous novels. However, the novel was rejected. Pym wrote back to Cape to express her feeling that she had been unfairly treated, and received a sympathetic but firm response. [3] Editor Tom Maschler, who had joined Jonathan Cape in 1960, made the decision to reject the novel. Maschler himself did not read the novel, but was given negative feedback by two readers at the company. [4]
Over the course of 1963, Pym sought out other publishers, including Longman and Macmillan, but was told that the novel was unsuitable or not likely to sell. [5] According to some accounts, the reason was its being "out of step with the racier literary climate of the sixties"; [1] others say Cape and possible further publishers viewed it as commercially unviable, even when endorsed by Philip Larkin, who said: [6] "It was a great pleasure and excitement to me to read An Unsuitable Attachment in typescript and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it continuously amusing and interesting – I have tried to keep my eye open for anything that would suggest why Cape's should not publish it, and I am bound to say that it still seems a mystery to me." [7]
Pym continued to revise the novel throughout 1964 and 1965. [8] At one point, she changed the title to Wrapped in Lemon Leaves. [9] Among other titles Pym considered for the novel were The Canon's Daughter and Reserved for Crocodiles. [10]
Pym would not have another novel published until 1977, when she was rediscovered by the reading public. She died in 1980, and An Unsuitable Attachment was finally published in 1982 by Macmillan in England and E.P. Dutton in the United States. The English edition included a foreword by Larkin as well as a note by her literary executor, the novelist Hazel Holt. The novel was recorded as an audiobook by Gretel Davis for Chivers Press in the 1980s and by Penelope Keith for the BBC in 1991. The novel was published in France in 1989 as Une demoiselle comme il faut (A Good Lady), and in Italy in 1987 as Una relazione sconveniente (An Improper Relationship).
The sections of the novel set in Rome were based on Pym's experiences in the city in 1961, where she was a delegate at an anthropology conference. [11]
On publication after Pym's death, the novel was well received. The Washington Post said that "the publisher must have been mad to reject this jewel", and The New York Times called it "a paragon of a novel". [12] The Boston Phoenix was less effusive, but noted that it was Pym's "quietness, of course, that makes her so very much an Anglophile’s cup of tea." [13]
Pym herself was not satisfied with the work; in a letter to Larkin, she later agreed that the lead character, Ianthe, was "very stiff" and that she had originally intended John to be a "much worse" character. [6] Larkin wrote that he found himself "not caring very greatly for Ianthe...her decency and good breeding are stated rather than shown", and he further observed: "I don't myself think that the number of the characters matters much; I enjoyed the book's richness in this respect. What I did feel was that there was a certain familiarity about some of them; Sophia and Penelope seemed to recall Jane and Prudence , and Mark Nicholas; Mervyn has something of Arthur Grampian, and of course we have been among the anthropologists before. What this adds up to is perhaps a sense of coasting - which doesn't bother me at all, but which might strike a critical publisher's reader – unsympathetic I mean rather than acute – as constituting 'the mixture as before'." [14]
Pym liked to bring back characters from previous novels to make minor reappearances. An Unsuitable Attachment is particularly notable for this. It features appearances by or mentions of Harriet Bede from Some Tame Gazelle , Professor Fairfax and Digby Fox from Less than Angels , Wilf Bason from A Glass of Blessings , and several characters from Excellent Women including Esther Clovis, Everard Bone, his wife Mildred and his mother, and Sister Blatt.
Pym re-used the characters of Mark and Sophia, as well as the cat Faustina, from An Unsuitable Attachment for her short story "A Christmas Visit", commissioned by the Church Times in 1978. The story was later collected in Civil to Strangers (1987).
The novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 10 15-minute episodes in 2010.
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, the second published novel by Barbara Pym, first appeared from Jonathan Cape in 1952. A novel of manners, it is generally acclaimed as her funniest and most successful in that genre.
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.
Ianthe may refer to:
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 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.
Thomas Michael Maschler was a British publisher and writer. From 1960, he was influential as the head of publishing company Jonathan Cape over a period of more than three decades. Maschler was noted for instituting the Booker Prize for British, Irish and Commonwealth literature in 1969. He was involved in publishing the works of many notable authors, including Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, John Lennon, Ian McEwan, Bruce Chatwin and Salman Rushdie.
Jane and Prudence is the third novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1953.
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.
An Academic Question is a novel by Barbara Pym, written in the early 1970s and published posthumously in 1986.
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.
À La Pym: The Barbara Pym Cookery Book is a 1988 cookbook by Hilary Pym and Honor Wyatt collecting recipes for meals served, or mentioned, in the novels of Hilary's sister, Barbara Pym. The book was published in the United States by E.P. Dutton in 1988, and in the United Kingdom by Prospect Books in 1995.
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