Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp

It was indeed very difficult for the Laventie children not to be a little priggish.

Ann Laventie, the youngest of three children in a long line of anti-social Sussex gentry, doesn't quite fit the mould of her intellectual, elegant, ultra-modern siblings Dick, an artist, and Elizabeth, a high-brow writer. Their father is scholarly and just wealthy enough to focus all his attention on reading and other highbrow pursuits. Ann, on the other hand, worries about being plump, is what might be called a 'people person, ' and appreciates the simpler pleasures. As the young Laventies spend more and more of their time in the glitter of London, their differences grow more pronounced, and when Ann returns home with an unsuitably ordinary fianc , this dazzling, witty battle of the brows reaches its exhilarating climax.

Rhododendron Pie, one of Margery Sharp's rarest and most sought-after novels, was her debut, reportedly written in one month while Sharp worked as a typist and shared a flat in Paddington with two other girls. But it already shows all the charm, humour, and sophistication that characterizes Sharp's beloved later work. First published in 1930, it has, inexplicably, never been reprinted. Until now. This new edition features an introduction by twentieth-century women's historian Elizabeth Crawford.

'A first novel of quite unusual charm, pointedly and gracefully written, and whimsically human' Yorkshire Post

Margery Sharp was born in Wiltshire in 1905 as Clara Margery Melita Sharp. She spent part of her childhood in Malta before returning to England with her family and enrolling at Streatham Hill High School. She went on to study at Bedford College in London, where she said her time was nearly totally devoted to journalism and campus activities. Still based in London, she began her literary career at the age of twenty-one, contributing fiction and non-fiction to many of the most prestigious publications of the time in both Britain and America. Major Geoffrey Castle, an aviation engineer, married her in 1938. She was a busy Army Education Lecturer when World War II broke out, but she continued her own work during and after the war.

In addition to the 'Miss Bianca' children's series, which was animated by Disney as The Rescuers in 1977, many of her adult stories were the foundation for Hollywood movie screenplays. Margery Sharp went on to write 22 adult novels (not 26, as some sources claim), as well as several short tales and novellas (many of which were only published in magazines) and various works for children. She died one year after her husband in Suffolk, in 1991.