Barbara Pym was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, the elder daughter of Frederic Crampton and Irene Thomas Pym. She was educated at a private school in Liverpool and at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied English literature and took a B.A. with honors in 1934. The Anglican church and higher institutions of learning--including Oxford itself--both found their way into her fiction. During World War II she served with the WRNS in both Britain and in Italy (as did the heroine of A Glass of Blessings, 1959). Her working life after the war was spent at the International African Institute in London, where she became assistant editor of their journal, Africa. Her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, appeared in 1950.

Between that date and 1961 five other novels of hers were published. All enjoyed a modest critical success and won her a band of admirers. Certain territories of English life became associated...