ABSTRACT
Barbara Pym: Quartet in Autumn The publisher's note on the front ofthe various editions ofBarbara Pym's novels quotes John Betjeman who described her as 'a splendid humorous writer', Philip Larkin who said 'she has a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies and comedies of everyday life', and Lord David Cecil who said of her work that these 'unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels .,. are for me the finest example of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years'. Similar tributes have been paid by A.L. Rowse, the New York Times Book Review and Anita Brookner. Pym is now a novelist finally established as one of the principal observers, commentators and creators of the southem English middle-class scene, of both the country and London, as it was in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
