E. M Delafield
1) Diary of a Provincial Lady, The Provincial Lady Goes Further, The Provincial Lady in America & The P
Author
Series
Description
Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood (1890—1943), more commonly referred to as E. M. Delafield, was a best-selling English author. A prolific writer, she produced 40 books in her lifetime including novels, short stories, and parodies. This volume contains Dashwood's complete "Provincial Lady" series, which were bestsellers in her time and have never been out of print. They include: "Diary of a Provincial Lady", "The Provincial Lady Goes Further", "The...
Author
Description
"Zella Sees Herself" (1915) - Zella is a beautiful orphan who must come to terms with her mother's death in a largely hostile world. The Novel is largely autobiographical and the first written work of E. M. Delafield.
"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.
"Consequences" (1919) - A young woman entering...
Author
Series
Description
This early work is E. M. Delafield's 1937 semi-autobiographical novel, "I Visit the Soviets - The Provincial Lady in Russia". Written in the style of a diary, it tells the story of woman living in 1930s Russia who finds herself toiling on a collective farm, battling with public transport, and generally struggling with life in Soviet Russia. An entertaining read that offers a glimpse into Russia in the early twentieth century, "I Visit the Soviets...
Author
Description
First published in 1928. Laura Temple faces the predicaments of many British middle-class wives and mothers living in country villages between the World Wars. Her too-large house, inherited by her husband Alfred, requires three servants to keep it running: generally unsatisfactory servants whom she is perpetually concerned will leave her employ for greener pastures, which they inevitably do. Her modest success as a short story writer helps augment...
Author
Series
Description
No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings. She was particularly amazed because, having received an overture sometime before and feeling that she would rather stay in the English countryside, she requested that they meet quite a few 'requirements' before she would agree to go.
They met every stipulation....
6) The Optimist
Author
Description
The ship swung slowly away from the side of the wharf. Several people on board then said, "Well, we're off at last!" to several other people who had only been thinking of saying it.
Owen Quentillian remembered another, longer, sea voyage taken by himself at an early age. Far more clearly he remembered his arrival at St. Gwenllian.
It was that which he wanted to recall, aware as he was of the necessity for resuming a connection that had almost insensibly...
Author
Series
Description
The Provincial Lady in Wartime, though the last of the Provincial Lady series, is one of the finest.
No further 'Diaries' had appeared since The Provincial Lady in America (published in 1934) when, in 1939, Harold Macmillan, then chairman of Macmillan publishers and a fan, made a personal request to E. M. Delafield for a new book. The onset of the war with Germany was serious, but, he said, Britain, was in need of the entertaining but pertinent...
Author
Series
Description
The Provincial Lady Goes Further is the immediate sequel to Diary of a Provincial Lady - and life mirrors art.
Our Provincial Lady has found herself, unexpectedly, with a literary success on her hands! She is suddenly 'somebody', both in her Devonshire environs and in London, where she establishes a bolthole - ostensibly so she could concentrate on the much-awaited sequel, but also so that she can enjoy the fruits of being a best-selling author!
In...
Author
Series
Description
Lady B. stays to tea. (Mem.: Bread-and-butter too thick. Speak to Ethel.) We talk some more about bulbs, the Dutch School of Painting, our Vicar's wife, sciatica, and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Query: is it possible to cultivate the art of conversation when living in the country all the year round?)'
If the question suggests a qualified answer, there is no doubt that the art of diary writing is alive and well and very, very funny in Devonshire...