The Diary of a Provincial Lady

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Challenge to Clarissa (1931) - Clarissa Fitzmaurice, a rich harridan, bullies the life out of her husband, his daughter Sophie, and her son by her first marriage, Lucien. But eventually Lucien and Sophie defy Clarissa and marry. She also includes a lady novelist Olivia who has shared her home for many years with her friend Elinor, and whose friendship had weathered, "as Miss Fish resentfully observed, the fuss about The Well of Loneliness." (See Boston marriage.) Here is a biography of E. M. Delafield (her married name: Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._M._D...

The War Workers (1918) - the travails of working in a Supply Depot under the tyrannical control of Charmain Vivian, who meets her match in a newly arrived clergyman's daughter Grace Jones. Ladies and Gentlemen in Victorian Fiction (1937) - published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf. Delafield was a great fan of Charlotte Mary Yonge. In 1961, Delafield's daughter, Rosamund Dashwood, published Provincial Daughter, a semi-autobiographical account of her own experiences with domestic life in the 1950s.

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Delafield was born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture in 1890. Her parents were a French count, whose family escaped to England during the revolution, and a successful novelist, Mrs Henry de la Pasture, who had a considerable influence on Ivy Compton-Burnett and was much admired by Evelyn Waugh. The characters are well drawn, from the infuriating Lady B, The vicar and his wife who seems to spend her whole time gossiping. Late and Soon (A Novel & 8 Short Stories): From the Renowned Author of The Diary of a Provincial Lady and The Way Things Are, Including The Bond of Un Start directly after lunch, Robert and Mary's husband appearing in a highly unnatural state of shiny smartness with a top-hat apiece. Effect of this splendour greatly mitigated, when they don the top-hats, by screams of unaffected amusement from both children. We drive off, leaving them leaning against Mademoiselle, apparently helpless with mirth.

I read a Goodreads friend’s review of this book, and it sounded quite good, and so I put it on my TBR list and I read it today and I liked it quite a bit. 😊 It is fiction but largely autobiographical, I think. The boy and girl have different names to Delafield’s own children, although I suspect they are pretty accurate representations nonetheless. It certainly has the feel of being grounded in reality, if somewhat embellished for literary effect. Otherwise dear Rose entirely unchanged and offers to put me up in her West-End flat as often as I like to come to London. Accept gratefully. (N.B. How very different to old school-friend Cissie Crabbe, with bed-sitting-room and gas-ring in Norwich! But should not like to think myself in any way a snob.) I feel sure that all women who read this book in America will often pause as I did with a nod and smile, perhaps a rueful smile, of agreement.” The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield With Illustrations by Arthur Watts First published 1930Diary of a Provincial Lady is a book whose time has come and gone. It is very cleverly done and maintains its tone skillfully throughout—hence the high rating—but I can’t enjoy it anymore the way I did when I first read it forty years ago. Faster! Faster! (1936) - Claudia Winstoe, a dynamo of energy, runs London Universal Services and her home with equal tyranny. Pushing herself too hard, she dies in a collision, and the family and business get on fine without her. A humorous account of the challenges of life for an upper middle class British housewife in the 1930's … but a case of probably too much of a good thing. As Others Hear Us: A Miscellany (1937) - a collection of humorous sketches which appeared in Punch and Time & Tide.

The Optimist (1922) - largely dominated by Canon Morchard, an 'utterly impossible clergyman' who starts as a horrible man but becomes quite saintly. She worries about planting her bulbs too late, about the bills coming in, where to find servants in the country and generally, in keeping up appearances. Book 3, In America as a successful author, was interesting enough but didn’t have the humourous details of the earlier two.The Diary of a Provincial Lady is a brilliantly observed comic novel, as funny and fresh today as when it was first written. My take on this is that writing the Diary definitely wasn't a waste of time for the author (as it is still read almost a hundred years later), but it has been rather on a waste of time side for me. Technically, it’s Spring, although it doesn’t feel yet as though the weather has settled on that. There was snow last …

The diary is written in the first person and Georgina Sutton is quite excellent. She has a gift for bringing out the humour, of which there is much, but also makes her character very sympathetic. It's a witty and amusing peep into how one woman copes with keeping up appearances, despite having a husband who is much more interested in his newspaper than her social dilemmas, as well a The latter Delafield is the one guyed in Provincial Lady, but it needed the satirical eye of her other self to do the guying and to chronicle so exactly the follies and idiosyncrasies of an entire neighbourhood. The success of the books lies in the fact that both sides of her character were stretched to the full.Rachel Ferguson complained that she wrote too much and her work was uneven whilst considering The Way Things Are a " completely perfect novel" and suggesting (in 1939) that "her humour and super-sensitive observation should make of her one of the best and most significant writers we possess, a comforting and timeless writer whose comments will delight a hundred years hence." [2] Books [ edit ]