SOURCE: A review of A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in Diaries and Letters, in America, November 24, 1984, p. 348.

In the following review, Long praises the posthumous publication of A Very Private Eye. According to Long, the volume of autobiographic writings "testifies to Pym's modest yet potent spell."

The quietest of English novelists, Barbara Pym makes an unlikely Cinderella, yet her literary success late in life does have, oddly, a Cinderella quality. Her career as a writer began slowly and hesitantly in the 1930's, was postponed by World War II and finally launched in 1950 with the publication of her first novel Some Tame Gazelle. Thereafter she published five other novels, including the wholly delightful Excellent Women, a tongue-in-cheek chronicle of an Anglican spinster in postwar London, which earned her a modest following and critical esteem. Yet in 1963 her seventh book, An Unsuitable Attachment, was rejected by her publisher Jonathan...