Out of the routine and small moments of modest, unfulfilled lives, Barbara Pym creates sensitive comedy that catches the way we sustain interest in our own lives and those of others, that shows how we grow and are illuminated and how we bear with loneliness and age. This study looks at the perceptiveness of her sexual comedy and her awareness of social change, as well as her subtle and sophisticated use of language and narrative form. Michael Cotsell places Pym among the great explorers of human value in the modern world. The author is also associate editor of "The Dickens Companion" and general editor of the series "English Literature and the Wider World".
