Editing Barbara Pym (section)

==Works and themes==
Several strong themes link works in the Pym [[Canon (fiction)|canon]], which are more notable for their [[Style (fiction)|style]] and [[characterisation]] than for their plots. A superficial reading gives the impression that they are [[Sketch story|sketches]] of village or London life, and [[comedy of manners|comedies of manners]], studying the social activities connected with the [[Anglican]] church, [[Anglo-Catholic]] parishes in particular. Pym attended several churches over her lifetime, including [[St Michael and All Angels Church, Barnes]], where she served on the Parochial Church Council.

Pym closely examines many aspects of relations between women and men, including unrequited feelings of women for men, based on her own experience. Pym was also one of the first popular novelists to write sympathetically about unambiguously gay characters, notably in ''[[A Glass of Blessings]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10071305/Philip-Hensher-toasts-the-novelist-Barbara-Pym.html|title=Philip Hensher toasts the novelist Barbara Pym|author=Philip Hensher|date=2 June 2013|website=The Telegraph|access-date=29 July 2018}}</ref> She portrayed the layers of community and figures in the church through church functions. The dialogue is often deeply [[irony|ironic]]. A tragic undercurrent runs through some of the later novels, especially ''Quartet in Autumn'' and ''The Sweet Dove Died''.

More recently, critics have noted the serious engagement with anthropology that Pym's novels depict. The seemingly naive narrator Mildred Lathbury (''Excellent Women''), for example, actually engages in a kind of participant-observer form that represents a reaction to the [[structural functionalism]] of the Learned Society's focus on kinship diagrams.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Watson|first1=Tim|title=Culture Writing: Literature and Anthropology in the Midcentury Atlantic World|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2018|pages=49–76}}</ref> Tim Watson links Pym's acute awareness of the social changes in the apparently cosy world of her novels to a critique of functionalism's emphasis on static social structures.

Pym's novels are known for their [[intertextuality]]. All of Pym's novels contain frequent references to English poetry and literature, from medieval poetry to much more recent work, including [[John Keats]] and [[Frances Greville]].

Additionally, Pym's novels function as a [[shared universe]], in which characters from one work can cross over into another. Usually the reappearances are in the form of brief cameos or mentions by other characters. For instance, the relationship between Mildred Lathbury and Everard Bone in ''Excellent Women'' is left unconfirmed at the end of that novel. However, the characters are referenced or appear in ''Jane and Prudence'', ''Less than Angels'', and ''An Unsuitable Attachment'', in which their marriage and happiness are confirmed. The character of Esther Clovis, a leading member of the anthropological community, appears first in ''Excellent Women'' and then in two other novels before her death; her memorial service is seen from the point of view of two different (unrelated) characters in ''An Academic Question'' and ''A Few Green Leaves''. Esther Clovis is thought to have been inspired by [[Beatrice Wyatt]], Pym's predecessor as assistant editor of ''Africa''.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.brunel.ac.uk/creative-writing/research/entertext/documents/entertext072/ET72TyleeED.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118131208/https://www.brunel.ac.uk/creative-writing/research/entertext/documents/entertext072/ET72TyleeED.pdf |archive-date=2022-01-18 |url-status=live|title=The Self and Others in 1950s England: Anthropology and the Literary Imagination in Barbara Pym's Less Than Angels|author=Claire Tylee|access-date=18 January 2022}}</ref>