7.8 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print (Hardback) Originally published 1953 Publisher Jonathan Cape OCLC 166627476 | 3.9/5 Goodreads Publication date 1953 ISBN 978-1-84408-449-4 Country United Kingdom Genres Fiction, Novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Pages 222 pp (hardback edition) Similar Barbara Pym books, Novels, Classical Studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jane and Prudence is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1953 and, according to the novelist Jilly Cooper, her finest work - "full of wit, plotting, characterization and miraculous observation".
Contents
Plot summary
Jane, a vicar's wife, lives a very different kind of life from her friend, the single and independent Prudence. The book details the period in Nicholas and Jane’s life when they take over a new parish in an (anonymous) English village and encounter the widower Fabian Driver, who Jane decides will make an excellent husband for Prudence. Prudence has an imponderable attraction to her older and completely impervious employer, the head of an unspecified academic foundation. There is, however, competition for Fabian - Miss Morrow, another spinster in the parish who seeks escape from her low-paid job as a companion to the domineering Miss Doggett.
Miss Morrow and Miss Doggett also appear in Pym's posthumously-published novel, Crampton Hodnet, which had been written in the late 1930s; the character of Miss Morrow is distinctly different in Jane and Prudence, as is that of Barbara Bird, also re-used from Crampton Hodnet.
Characters
Adaptations
Jane and Prudence was adapted for radio and first broadcast in 2008. Penelope Wilton was the narrator, Emma Fielding played Prudence and Susie Blake Jane. Miss Doggett was played by Elizabeth Spriggs.