SOURCE: "Characters in Search of Order and Ceremony: Secular Faith of Barbara Pym," in Commonweal, January 13, 1984, pp. 19-21.

In the following essay, Wymard considers commonplace gatherings and planned activities in Pym's novels as attempts to impose order on chaos and to alleviate loneliness of modern life.

Most critics of Barbara Pym call attention to the fact that after having written six successful novels between 1950 and 1961, her seventh, An Unsuitable Attachment, was rejected by publishers in 1963. Pym was rescued from oblivion only when Philip Larkin and David Cecil named her, in a 1975 anniversary issue of the Times Literary Supplement, as the most underrated English novelist of the twentieth century. Before her death in 1980, Pym resumed her career with Quartet in Autumn (1977), The Sweet Dove Died (1978), and A Few Green Leaves (1980). But her ten novels, now available in England and the United States, are embraced, unfortunately, as well-crafted entertainments when...