The Sweet Dove Died

The Sweet Dove Died - Paperback

$16.95
$16.95
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The Sweet Dove Died
  • The Sweet Dove Died
The Sweet Dove Died - Paperback

The Sweet Dove Died - Paperback

by Barbara Pym
$16.95
$16.95

Book Overview

An acidly funny novel about a woman who falls for a much younger man by one of Britain's great writers of social comedy, now back in print.

A lesser-known, darker sister to Barbara Pym's Excellent Women.

The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent towards everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James.

Leonora's possession of James is challenged, however, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym's sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart.
ISBN9781681379753
Author Barbara Pym
PublisherNew York Review of Books
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedSeptember 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages240
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Fiction Humorous Women

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More by Barbara Pym

The Sweet Dove Died

The Sweet Dove Died - Paperback

The Sweet Dove Died - Paperback

By Barbara Pym

About Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym (1913-1980) was a bestselling and award-winning English novelist. Her first book, Some Tame Gazelle (1950), launched her career as a writer beloved for her social comedies of class and manners. Pym is the only author to be named twice in a Times Literary Supplement list of "the most underrated novelists of the century." She produced thirteen novels, the last three published posthumously. Her 1977 novel Quartet in Autumn was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

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