In Pym's first published novel, middle-aged spinster sisters Belinda and Harriet Bede live together in an English village, where the meek romantic Belinda quietly nurses her unrequited love for the pompous, married Archdeacon Hoccleve while her plump, jolly sister dotes on an endless parade of curates and gently turns down repeated marriage proposals from an Italian count. Barbara Pym based the characters in this novel, written shortly after she came down from Oxford in the 1930s, on herself, her sister Hilary, and many of her friends from Oxford, projecting them into their fifties.
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