E. M. Delafield (1890–1943)
Author of Diary of a Provincial Lady
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Please note the following distinctions, and try to keep the single-story separate from the omnibus editions which contain several "Provincial Lady" stories.
Single Story:
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Virago, 1844085228)
Diary of a Provincial Lady (Prion, 1853753688)
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Remploy, 0706610342)
Diary of a Provincial Lady (Chicago, 0897330536)
Omnibus Edition (contains 4 stories):
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Virago, 0860685225)
The Provincial Lady (Macmillan, pre-ISBN)
Series
Works by E. M. Delafield
Sophy Mason Comes Back 2 copies
As Others Hear us 1 copy
And Never the Twain Shall Meet [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Tortoise [short story] — Author — 1 copy
Reflex Action [short story] — Author — 1 copy
Holiday Group [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Waiting Lady [short story] — Author — 1 copy
Terminus [short story] 1 copy
Reparation [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Threshold of Eternity [short work] — Author — 1 copy
Incidental [short story] — Author — 1 copy
Gwen [short story] 1 copy
Time and Tide 1 copy
The Glass Wall: A Play 1 copy
The Bond of Union [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Luggage in the Hall: An Un-moral Story [short story] — Author — 1 copy
O Tempora! O Mores! [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Provincial Lady: The Diary of a Provincial Lady & The Provincial Lady Goes Further, abridged (1951) 1 copy
Victims [short work] 1 copy
Hukutav naine 1 copy
Love Has No Resurrection [short story] — Author — 1 copy
O.K. for Story [short work] — Author — 1 copy
It's All Too Difficult [short story] — Author — 1 copy
Bluff [short work] 1 copy
The Girl Who Told the Truth [short story] — Author — 1 copy
The Other Poor Chap [short work] — Author — 1 copy
The Reason [short work] — Author — 1 copy
The Indispensable Woman [short work] — Author — 1 copy
Opportunity [short work] — Author — 1 copy
The Philistine [short story] — Author — 1 copy
My Son Had Nothing on His Mind [short work] — Author — 1 copy
They Don't Wear Labels [short work] — Author — 1 copy
Associated Works
The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (2000) — Contributor, some editions — 623 copies, 9 reviews
Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life (1943) — Introduction, some editions — 13 copies
Missing From Their Homes — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Delafield, E. M.
- Legal name
- Dashwood, Edmee Elizabeth Monica
- Other names
- de la Pasture, Edmee Elizabeth Monica (birth name)
- Birthdate
- 1890-06-09
- Date of death
- 1943-12-02
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
book reviewer - Organizations
- Voluntary Aid Detachment
Time and Tide
Women's Institute - Relationships
- de la Pasture, Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle (mother)
Dashwood, R. M. (daughter)
Clifford, Hugh (stepfather) - Short biography
- E.M. Delafield was the pen name of Edmee Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, born in Steyning, Sussex, England, the daughter of well-known novelist Elizabeth Bonham and her husband Count Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture. Delafield was educated by French governesses and attended several boarding schools, followed by nine months as a postulant nun in a convent in Belgium. She worked with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) during World War I, and these experiences formed the basis of her first novel, Zella Sees Herself, published in 1917. She continued to publish one or two novels every year until her death. She is best known for the bestselling series The Diary of a Provincial Lady and its sequels. She also was an important contributor of book reviews, sketches, and short stories to Time and Tide magazine. In 1919, she married Colonel Arthur Paul Dashwood, an engineer, and they spent two years living in the Malay States before returning to live in an old house in Kentisbeare, Devonshire. The couple had two children, and Delafield served as president of the Kentisbeare Women's Institute for the the rest of her life. Her daughter Rosamund Dashwood published Provincial Daughter, a continuation of Delafield's popular series of books, in 1961.
- Nationality
- England
UK - Birthplace
- Steyning, Sussex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Kentisbeare, Devon, England, UK
Malay States
Llandogo, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK - Place of death
- England, UK
- Burial location
- Kentisbeare churchyard, Devon, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
- Disambiguation notice
- Please note the following distinctions, and try to keep the single-story separate from the omnibus editions which contain several "Provincial Lady" stories.
Single Story:
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Virago, 1844085228)
Diary of a Provincial Lady (Prion, 1853753688)
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Remploy, 0706610342)
Diary of a Provincial Lady (Chicago, 0897330536)
Omnibus Edition (contains 4 stories):
The Diary of a Provincial Lady (Virago, 0860685225)
The Provincial Lady (Macmillan, pre-ISBN)
Members
Discussions
British Author Challenge November 2024: E.M. Delafield & T.H. White in 75 Books Challenge for 2024 (November 2024)
Reviews
Considering how very little happens in this book, it’s pretty amusing. E.M. Delafield’s narrator heads to London to try to help with the war effort, but is turned away again and again. She finally ends up as a volunteer at a canteen for ambulance drivers and nurses. That’s pretty much it. It shouldn’t have been funny and interesting, yet it was!
The Provincial Lady finds old friends and new in London, and she’s just as witty and incisive as ever. The description of Granny Bo-Peep show more — an incredibly annoying old lady with an overpowering sense of her self-worth — is worth the price of admission all by itself. The novel ends incredibly abruptly, perhaps because of the death of the son of Elizabeth Dashwood (Delafield’s real name) in late 1940, although others assume that it was because Dashwood got a paid job in government service. The ending — really a lack of one — led me to lower the book’s rating.
This final novel in the series is said to have been at the request of Harold Macmillan, then a Tory member of Parliament, but later prime minister. I’m glad he asked. show less
The Provincial Lady finds old friends and new in London, and she’s just as witty and incisive as ever. The description of Granny Bo-Peep show more — an incredibly annoying old lady with an overpowering sense of her self-worth — is worth the price of admission all by itself. The novel ends incredibly abruptly, perhaps because of the death of the son of Elizabeth Dashwood (Delafield’s real name) in late 1940, although others assume that it was because Dashwood got a paid job in government service. The ending — really a lack of one — led me to lower the book’s rating.
This final novel in the series is said to have been at the request of Harold Macmillan, then a Tory member of Parliament, but later prime minister. I’m glad he asked. show less
The War-Workers is an early novel from E M Delafield, published about twelve years before her most famous work The Diary of a Provincial Lady (which I re-read recently). This is one of the titles on the list of books for the LibraryThing Great war theme read – it was actually one of the books for March and April – I’ll be playing catch up for the rest of the year I think, and I am rather surprised at just how much I loved it.
This novel is not one which takes us to the trenches of the show more Western Front – plenty of the other books we are reading this year do take us there – this is a home front WW1 novel, with an army of a wholly different kind. The army in question is an army of women, the women who ran the supply depots, met hundreds of men off troop trains late at night supplying them with sandwiches, cake and steaming cups of tea, and ran canteens. Women war-workers who were indefatigable in their approach to their duty, and who put their own lives on hold, and kept going even when ill.
E M Delafield’s wonderful wit and eye for the ridiculousness in people is quite evident in this early novel. I did chuckle over the marvellously dreadful Mrs Willoughby – who talks incessantly to her spoilt little Pekinese Puff, and the equally dreadful Miss Delmege – whose stubborn devotion to Miss Vivian blinds her to Char’s obvious faults, and who declares anything she doesn’t like or agree with to be strange.
“The new Canteen in Pollard Street was opened before Christmas. Lesbia Willoughby, in an immense overall of light blue-and-white check, stood behind a long buffet and demanded stridently whether she wasn't too exactly like a barmaid for words, and Char's consignment of helpers worked for the most part briskly and efficiently, only the unfortunate Miss Plumtree upsetting a mug of scalding tea over herself at the precise moment when Miss Vivian, trim and workmanlike in her dark uniform, entered the big hall and stood watching the scene with her arrogant, observant gaze. She did not ask Miss Plumtree whether her hand was scalded, but neither did she rebuke her very evident clumsiness. She moved slowly and imperially through the thick tobacco-laden atmosphere, speaking to several of the men, and silently observing the demeanour of her staff.”
Delafield’s ‘The War-Workers’ is centred around a Midlands supply depot run by domineering 29 year old Charmaine Vivian, the only daughter of Lady and Sir Percy Vivian, who struggle to understand her total absorption in her work. It is to their wonderfully comfortable rural estate Plessings – that Char returns later and later each evening – after a day of organising and managing her slavishly devoted underlings. At home Miss Bruce, another blindly devoted woman – once Char’s governess, now her mother’s secretary – fusses happily around Char upon her return each day. Char is blissfully unaware of how the little comforts she takes for granted are managed for her by other people. Her beloved Brucey and her maid, make sure she is warm and comfortable, her room lit by a wonderful fire, good food and hot water available upon her late return. Her office is always lit by a good fire when she arrives at ten o’ clock each morning – yet Char gives no thought to how it might have got there.
At the over-crowded hostel across the street from Char Vivian’s busy little office – live the squabbling exhausted women who work for Char. They share rooms, manage with limited hot water, and small kettles in their rooms, working ridiculously long hours for a woman who is barely aware of them as human beings. For Miss Vivian keeps her workers firmly at arm’s length, never entering into personal or friendly conversation, or considering their small discomforts and illnesses, irritated should one want to take time off. Miss Vivian is proud to put work before everything else, and declares herself puzzled should anyone think to do anything else. These women workers are a wonderfully drawn bunch of characters, gossipy, fretful, snobbish and highly entertaining. Into their midst comes Grace Jones, “a lady” Grace becomes Miss Vivian’s under-secretary, although quite obviously enormously capable – Miss Vivian stubbornly refuses to see her as being as capable as she is. When Grace meets Lady Vivian, Char’s mother immediately takes to her – much to Char’s enormous irritation.
When Char’s father is taken ill, Char’s mother requests that she should stay at home more – as her father is becoming distressed by the constant late night comings and goings. Char is outraged by the suggestion that the office could possibly manage without her constant attention – and after only a few days off because she herself is suffering from flu – she returns to her office in high dudgeon – her mother has insisted she move into her worker’s hostel.
There are those who recognise the monster within Char Vivian, Grace Jones not the least of them. John Trevellyan, her mother’s cousin, is annoyed and dismayed by Char’s behaviour, John is just one more thing Char takes for granted, and so she is a little uncomfortable when she sees him getting rather friendly with Grace. Dr Prince, the doctor who has known Char since childhood, thinks Char’s slavish obsession with her work has more to do with being seen to do it and the power and prestige it gives her than anything else.
“I’ll tell you something else. It’s not the work you want to get back to, young lady, it’s the excitement, and the official position, and the right it gives you to interfere with people who knew how to run a hospital and everything connected with it some twenty years or so before you came into the world”
Char is finally forced to make some changes to her organisation, and Grace finds herself to be deeply appreciated by others whose good opinion she is glad to have. I really loved this book; I really should have had more faith in it. show less
This novel is not one which takes us to the trenches of the show more Western Front – plenty of the other books we are reading this year do take us there – this is a home front WW1 novel, with an army of a wholly different kind. The army in question is an army of women, the women who ran the supply depots, met hundreds of men off troop trains late at night supplying them with sandwiches, cake and steaming cups of tea, and ran canteens. Women war-workers who were indefatigable in their approach to their duty, and who put their own lives on hold, and kept going even when ill.
E M Delafield’s wonderful wit and eye for the ridiculousness in people is quite evident in this early novel. I did chuckle over the marvellously dreadful Mrs Willoughby – who talks incessantly to her spoilt little Pekinese Puff, and the equally dreadful Miss Delmege – whose stubborn devotion to Miss Vivian blinds her to Char’s obvious faults, and who declares anything she doesn’t like or agree with to be strange.
“The new Canteen in Pollard Street was opened before Christmas. Lesbia Willoughby, in an immense overall of light blue-and-white check, stood behind a long buffet and demanded stridently whether she wasn't too exactly like a barmaid for words, and Char's consignment of helpers worked for the most part briskly and efficiently, only the unfortunate Miss Plumtree upsetting a mug of scalding tea over herself at the precise moment when Miss Vivian, trim and workmanlike in her dark uniform, entered the big hall and stood watching the scene with her arrogant, observant gaze. She did not ask Miss Plumtree whether her hand was scalded, but neither did she rebuke her very evident clumsiness. She moved slowly and imperially through the thick tobacco-laden atmosphere, speaking to several of the men, and silently observing the demeanour of her staff.”
Delafield’s ‘The War-Workers’ is centred around a Midlands supply depot run by domineering 29 year old Charmaine Vivian, the only daughter of Lady and Sir Percy Vivian, who struggle to understand her total absorption in her work. It is to their wonderfully comfortable rural estate Plessings – that Char returns later and later each evening – after a day of organising and managing her slavishly devoted underlings. At home Miss Bruce, another blindly devoted woman – once Char’s governess, now her mother’s secretary – fusses happily around Char upon her return each day. Char is blissfully unaware of how the little comforts she takes for granted are managed for her by other people. Her beloved Brucey and her maid, make sure she is warm and comfortable, her room lit by a wonderful fire, good food and hot water available upon her late return. Her office is always lit by a good fire when she arrives at ten o’ clock each morning – yet Char gives no thought to how it might have got there.
At the over-crowded hostel across the street from Char Vivian’s busy little office – live the squabbling exhausted women who work for Char. They share rooms, manage with limited hot water, and small kettles in their rooms, working ridiculously long hours for a woman who is barely aware of them as human beings. For Miss Vivian keeps her workers firmly at arm’s length, never entering into personal or friendly conversation, or considering their small discomforts and illnesses, irritated should one want to take time off. Miss Vivian is proud to put work before everything else, and declares herself puzzled should anyone think to do anything else. These women workers are a wonderfully drawn bunch of characters, gossipy, fretful, snobbish and highly entertaining. Into their midst comes Grace Jones, “a lady” Grace becomes Miss Vivian’s under-secretary, although quite obviously enormously capable – Miss Vivian stubbornly refuses to see her as being as capable as she is. When Grace meets Lady Vivian, Char’s mother immediately takes to her – much to Char’s enormous irritation.
When Char’s father is taken ill, Char’s mother requests that she should stay at home more – as her father is becoming distressed by the constant late night comings and goings. Char is outraged by the suggestion that the office could possibly manage without her constant attention – and after only a few days off because she herself is suffering from flu – she returns to her office in high dudgeon – her mother has insisted she move into her worker’s hostel.
There are those who recognise the monster within Char Vivian, Grace Jones not the least of them. John Trevellyan, her mother’s cousin, is annoyed and dismayed by Char’s behaviour, John is just one more thing Char takes for granted, and so she is a little uncomfortable when she sees him getting rather friendly with Grace. Dr Prince, the doctor who has known Char since childhood, thinks Char’s slavish obsession with her work has more to do with being seen to do it and the power and prestige it gives her than anything else.
“I’ll tell you something else. It’s not the work you want to get back to, young lady, it’s the excitement, and the official position, and the right it gives you to interfere with people who knew how to run a hospital and everything connected with it some twenty years or so before you came into the world”
Char is finally forced to make some changes to her organisation, and Grace finds herself to be deeply appreciated by others whose good opinion she is glad to have. I really loved this book; I really should have had more faith in it. show less
The Provincial Lady Series: Diary of a Provincial Lady, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, The Provincial Lady in America & The Provincial Lady in Wartime by E. M. Delafield
This collection of four of E. M. Delafield's Provincial Lady books in one edition was an absolute delight. If you've not heard of this writer or these books before, completely ignore the cover of this edition as it is entirely inappropriate and of the wrong era.
Written in diary form in often truncated sentences, the first book in this series was written in 1930, and although containing fictional characters the books borrow much from Delafield's own life.
This woman was, in short, an absolute show more riot. Despite the setting being close on 100 years ago, the Provincial Lady's daily concerns feel almost modern, which is no doubt down to the razor-sharp wit throughout which feels ahead of its time compared to much writing of that era. She is the Caitlin Moran or Helen Fielding of her era, a writer whose very essence exudes from her protagonist with endless witticisms, self-deprecation and withering commentary on those that cross her path.
In the first book, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, our narrator documents with dry humour her daily struggles as a woman of relatively high social standing running a household. We're never told what her husband Robert's occupation is, but they move in upper middle class circles and have a small staff to manage the domestic chores in the household. The cook is fairly useless but formidable, and our Provincial Lady spends much of her time failing to work up the courage to address her about areas that need improvement, which reminded me of friends who work full time in demanding jobs yet are scared to confront their cleaner when they do a lousy job. Our protagonist has a busy mind, and although she accepts that household management is her responsibility it's not something she enjoys or wishes to prioritise when she can help it. She sends story offerings to her favourite publication Time and Tide, but at this stage this feels like a hobby also indulged in by many of her friends and acquaintances. She enjoys trips up to London and wishes to spend more of her time there, the country life being a little too dull, but despite governesses for her youngest child, boarding school for her oldest and a small household staff, money is always tight. Despite this, her spending is only occasionally curtailed, and she regularly gets indignant over the increasingly short patience of the bank over the state of her overdraft.
I am sure that every woman will acknowledge that choosing and creating one's own rich, elegant, and costly clothes is an extremely efficient cure for any worries about money.
In the second book, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, our narrator is shocked to have earned a book deal from her Time and Tide writing which considerably changes the financial circumstances of the family (echoing how Delafield found her way to publishing). Now a woman of independent means, she delights in spontaneously buying a flat up in London to support her need to spend regular time there for her work, when in reality the writing of the second book she's received an advance for is continually pushed to the end of her to do list as she's much too busy enjoying herself. Our protagonist has little ego or airs about her, and her regular disappointment in her appearance surely strikes a chord with so many modern females reading this book, despite the passage of time.
January 22nd - Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold, which he has hitherto ignored - is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.
In the third novel, The Provincial Lady goes on a promotional tour of America for her book and delights us with her mixed emotions on being away from her family for two months whilst having a whale of a time. Every telegram she receives she's convinced brings news of her children dying in some tragic accident, which of course never happens yet taps into the preposterous ideas that many of us mothers get into our heads when we have to leave our children for any considerable length of time. She attends the Chicago World Fair, delights that the English custom for tea seems to translate to cocktails in America, and insists on a trip to the Alcott house, which is her publisher's only concession on a whirlwind tour full of engagements. Despite her somewhat new rise to the fame, everyday worries continue to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Write postcards, to Rose, the children, and Robert, and after some thought send one to Cook, although entirely uncertain as to whether this will gratify her or not. Am surprised, and rather disturbed, to find that wording of Cook's postcard takes more thought than that on all the others put together.
In the final book, The Provincial Lady in Wartime, our Provincial Lady chronicles her life up in London during the initial stage of WWII, dubbed the Phoney War. During this time she, along with all her friends and acquaintances, is keen to 'do her bit', yet there's so little happening she can't get anyone to take any interest in using her skills on a voluntary basis. It's an interesting (and of course amusing) account of a period I've not read about previously in WWII accounts, this desperation to call oneself to action and feeling the social and personal disappointment of not having any role of importance to undertake, and also waiting for the action to start which never seems to come. She eventually gets a position in 'the underworld' canteen beneath the Adelphi Theatre, where volunteers for the ambulance corps, etc. are occasionally training but more often than not hanging around waiting for something to happen.
I absolutely loved this series (which absolutely didn't need such a long review, but once I got started I couldn't stop myself). She's a funny and quirky writer, and it was an absolutely delight from start to finish. If you've enjoyed reads such as Mrs Bridge I can definitely recommend this.
Diary of a Provincial Lady - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady Goes Further - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady in America - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady in Wartime - 4 stars (the tightening of belts and loss of socialising during this early war period made this last book a little less entertaining). show less
Written in diary form in often truncated sentences, the first book in this series was written in 1930, and although containing fictional characters the books borrow much from Delafield's own life.
This woman was, in short, an absolute show more riot. Despite the setting being close on 100 years ago, the Provincial Lady's daily concerns feel almost modern, which is no doubt down to the razor-sharp wit throughout which feels ahead of its time compared to much writing of that era. She is the Caitlin Moran or Helen Fielding of her era, a writer whose very essence exudes from her protagonist with endless witticisms, self-deprecation and withering commentary on those that cross her path.
In the first book, The Diary of a Provincial Lady, our narrator documents with dry humour her daily struggles as a woman of relatively high social standing running a household. We're never told what her husband Robert's occupation is, but they move in upper middle class circles and have a small staff to manage the domestic chores in the household. The cook is fairly useless but formidable, and our Provincial Lady spends much of her time failing to work up the courage to address her about areas that need improvement, which reminded me of friends who work full time in demanding jobs yet are scared to confront their cleaner when they do a lousy job. Our protagonist has a busy mind, and although she accepts that household management is her responsibility it's not something she enjoys or wishes to prioritise when she can help it. She sends story offerings to her favourite publication Time and Tide, but at this stage this feels like a hobby also indulged in by many of her friends and acquaintances. She enjoys trips up to London and wishes to spend more of her time there, the country life being a little too dull, but despite governesses for her youngest child, boarding school for her oldest and a small household staff, money is always tight. Despite this, her spending is only occasionally curtailed, and she regularly gets indignant over the increasingly short patience of the bank over the state of her overdraft.
I am sure that every woman will acknowledge that choosing and creating one's own rich, elegant, and costly clothes is an extremely efficient cure for any worries about money.
In the second book, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, our narrator is shocked to have earned a book deal from her Time and Tide writing which considerably changes the financial circumstances of the family (echoing how Delafield found her way to publishing). Now a woman of independent means, she delights in spontaneously buying a flat up in London to support her need to spend regular time there for her work, when in reality the writing of the second book she's received an advance for is continually pushed to the end of her to do list as she's much too busy enjoying herself. Our protagonist has little ego or airs about her, and her regular disappointment in her appearance surely strikes a chord with so many modern females reading this book, despite the passage of time.
January 22nd - Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold, which he has hitherto ignored - is better. I reply that it has gone. Then why, he asks, do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.
In the third novel, The Provincial Lady goes on a promotional tour of America for her book and delights us with her mixed emotions on being away from her family for two months whilst having a whale of a time. Every telegram she receives she's convinced brings news of her children dying in some tragic accident, which of course never happens yet taps into the preposterous ideas that many of us mothers get into our heads when we have to leave our children for any considerable length of time. She attends the Chicago World Fair, delights that the English custom for tea seems to translate to cocktails in America, and insists on a trip to the Alcott house, which is her publisher's only concession on a whirlwind tour full of engagements. Despite her somewhat new rise to the fame, everyday worries continue to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground.
Write postcards, to Rose, the children, and Robert, and after some thought send one to Cook, although entirely uncertain as to whether this will gratify her or not. Am surprised, and rather disturbed, to find that wording of Cook's postcard takes more thought than that on all the others put together.
In the final book, The Provincial Lady in Wartime, our Provincial Lady chronicles her life up in London during the initial stage of WWII, dubbed the Phoney War. During this time she, along with all her friends and acquaintances, is keen to 'do her bit', yet there's so little happening she can't get anyone to take any interest in using her skills on a voluntary basis. It's an interesting (and of course amusing) account of a period I've not read about previously in WWII accounts, this desperation to call oneself to action and feeling the social and personal disappointment of not having any role of importance to undertake, and also waiting for the action to start which never seems to come. She eventually gets a position in 'the underworld' canteen beneath the Adelphi Theatre, where volunteers for the ambulance corps, etc. are occasionally training but more often than not hanging around waiting for something to happen.
I absolutely loved this series (which absolutely didn't need such a long review, but once I got started I couldn't stop myself). She's a funny and quirky writer, and it was an absolutely delight from start to finish. If you've enjoyed reads such as Mrs Bridge I can definitely recommend this.
Diary of a Provincial Lady - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady Goes Further - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady in America - 4.5 stars
The Provincial Lady in Wartime - 4 stars (the tightening of belts and loss of socialising during this early war period made this last book a little less entertaining). show less
Ugh. I was hoping for another Mrs. Miniver; not. The Provincial Lady is a fluff-head who spends a great deal of her time thinking about clothes and makeup - hers and everyone else's (and everyone else's is always better than hers - inferiority complex much?). The rest of the time she's trying (and mostly failing) to deal with her children, worrying about money, and very rarely and reluctantly doing any writing. The whole thing is presented exactly like a diary - shorthand references, show more incomplete sentences, and a good deal of "I thought, but of course I didn't say...". The worrying about money, in particular, strikes me rather like that child's essay: "The whole family was poor. The maid was poor, the butler was poor...". While I was reading, I kept thinking that this would be an utter treasure trove for a historian looking for data on that period (1930s England, I believe) - every petty detail is carefully preserved. Now I admit that Mrs. Miniver could have been written out of such a diary, but MM is selected vignettes in lyrical language; the Provincial Lady is the whole compost pile from which such gems could have been plucked. Bleah. I'm tempted to find the first one, to see if it was any better; and I have Russia, and want to see if it it continued or got worse. But I'm definitely not rereading. Not for me, thanks. show less
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