SOURCE: "Feminine Humour," in English Humour, Stein and Day Publishers, 1976, pp. 115-38.

Priestley was the author of numerous popular novels that depict the world of everyday, middle-class England. His most notable critical work is Literature and Western Man (1960), a survey of Western literature from the invention of movable type through the mid-twentieth century. In the following excerpt, Priestley reflects on humor in Delafield's Provincial Lady series.

[Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930) and The Provincial Lady in War-Time (1940) (There were two other Provincial Lady diaries between these)] are now so far removed in time that they have acquired a social-historical interest, but they still succeed, it seems to me—and I have just reread them—as humour. I must admit they are spiced with irony that other readers may miss, simply because I knew E. M. Delafield fairly well as a firm strongish character, whereas her Provincial Lady is...