The Provincial Lady

Description

A special edition of The Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield reissued with a bright retro design to celebrate Pan's 70th anniversary.

The Provincial Lady should lead a charmed, upper-middle class life in her Devonshire village but with a husband reluctant to do anything but doze behind The Times, mischievous children and trying servants, it's a challenge keeping up appearances on an inadequate income, particularly in front of the infuriating and haughty Lady Boxe.

Delightfully witty, the Provincial Lady was the Bridget Jones of the 1930s, documenting the chaotic peculiarities of everyday life with wonderful wit and humour. This abridged edition takes the very best extracts from her first two `diaries' and presents them as one brilliantly comic novel.

Promotion info

An abridged edition of E. M. Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady and The Provincial Lady Goes Further.

Reviews

The most amusing diarist who has appeared since Mr. Pooter kept his Diary of a Nobody [by George Grossmith] . . . one of the most delightful pieces of comedy I've read for years * News Chronicle * Miss Delafield's humour is crisp and unforced . . . every page has an unexpected twist * Daily Mail * It is a simple domestic chronicle, gloriously funny * Yorkshire Post *

Author description

E. M. Delafield (1890-1943) was born in Sussex. Her mother was also a well-known novelist, writing as Mrs Henry de la Pasture, and Delafield chose her pen name based on a suggestion by her sister Yoe. A debutante in 1909, Delafield was accepted as a postulant by a French religious order in 1911 but decided against joining, a topic she explores in her novel Consequences (1919). Delafield worked as a nurse in a Voluntary Aid Detachment following the outbreak of the First World War, and her first novel Zella Sees Herself was written during this time and published in 1917. Diary of a Provincial Lady, her most successful novel, inspired several sequels and is a tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Delafield herself, written after a request by the editor of Time and Tide for some `light middles' in serial form.