This is a biography of Barbara Pym which draws on hitherto unpublished material and extracts from her correspondence with Philip Larkin. The book describes her Shropshire childhood, her romantic love affairs in Oxford, her service as a WRNS officer in Naples and her attempts to become a successful novelist. The author, a close friend of Barbara Pym's for 30 years, also examines the dark period from 1963, when Pym's novels were rejected as unpublishable, through the wilderness years until 1977 when her literary reputation was re-established by Philip Larkin and Lord Cecil.