Product Description: Originally published in the 1930s and 1940s and never before collected, these stories by the incomparable Angela Thirkell relate merry scenes of a trip to the pantomime, escapades on ice, a Christmas Day gone awry, and an electrifying afternoon for Laura Morland and friends at Low Rising, not to mention the chatter of the arty set at a London private view...read more

Product Description: In August Folly, the village of Worsted is staging Hippolytus. Inevitably, the most absurd romances bloom. Boorish young Richard Tebben, just down from Oxford, falls in love with Mrs. Dean, mother of nine, whose oldest son loves Richard s sister, who in turn loves another...read more

A young woman experiences the entanglements of love gained and lost and attempts to order her life in a small village in the gently rolling hills of Barsetshire

As the war continues, life in Northbridge sees changes. Mrs Villars, the Rector's wife, finds the attentions of Lieutenant Holden of the Barsetshires, who is billeted with her, quite exhausting. The middle-aged ladies and gentlemen who undertake roof-spotting from the church tower are more concerned with their own daily life than with parachutists. There is also the triangle of Mr Downing, his redoubtable hostess Miss Pemberton and the hospitable Mrs Turner at the Hollies, together with a chorus of officers billeted at the Rectory, ladies with violent leanings to High or Broad church, and other village characters.

Product Description: A witty romp through English Country-house life at its most delightfully absurd. At Rushwater House in West Barsetshire, Lady Emily Leslie and her family are entertaining an assortment of house guests, hangers-on, and French monarchists...read more

Product Description: Following the social event of the summer, the marriage of Rose Birkett (the county's scatterbrain heart-breaker), Fall brings WWII. The transition to war introduces unexpected elements into the Barsetshire milieu. Despite the newly somber atmosphere, evacuee children (see Nurse's "lust for power over babies"), nouveau riche migrs (Mr...read more

Product Description: This novel centers around the weekend party that Alice Barton, a shy English girl, attends at Pomfret Towers, the magnificent seventeenth-century home of Lord Pomfret. Alice's mother, Mrs. Barton, has decided that now is the time that timid, home-centered Alice, must learn to socialize...read more

Product Description: Mr. Marling, of Marling Hall, realizes he will probably never be able to hold onto his wonderful old estate and to pass it down to his children. World War II is bringing an end to so many things, but the Marlings carry on as best they can in the face of rationing and changed living conditions...read more

Middle-aged Catherine Middleton, married to an obtuse but endearing older man, is the still center of a swirl of two generations of "gentry" on the brink of WW II. The activities of youngsters and contemporaries go on around her and it is only gradually that one sees how, without conscious manipulation, nothing happens without her. The characters are subtly and humorously drawn--keep an eye on the hypochondriac and self-absorbed Miss Starter who displays a shrewd gift for defining the essentials and deflating the fatuous. At the end, youngsters and oldsters are properly sorted out and paired off, mostly as expected, after several false starts. Alistair, the older man who sets off after the 'ingénue' is nudged back into place with Catherine's sister-in-law (his contemporary). She, in turn, sees 'her young man' off to seek his dream, leaving her bereft of the companions of her mind and heart -- duty and honor intact, with the notion of 'self-fulfillment at all costs' decades away.

Sweet as the scent of heliotrope and sharp as gooseberry fool, The Brandons features a host of unforgettable characters, from the beautiful but vague Mrs. Brandon to fierce Miss Amelia Brandon, Aunt Sissie, bequeathing her frightful abbey (which no one wants) from her four poster bed. Romantic complications proliferate among her unwilling heirs. And there's still the Vicarage Fete to be enjoyed or endured before everything is gloriously resolved by one of our most wickedly funny authors.

Product Description: Mrs. Thirkell's sweet and witty Barsetshire novels provide a bemused scrutiny of British manners. In August Folly, the village of Worsted is staging Hippolytus. Inevitably, the most absurd romances bloom.

Product Description: Three Houses is a winsome reminiscence of Angela Thirkell's 1890's childhood, in which she recalls the three houses which shaped her sensibility. Each house insipires her memories of its furniture, gardens, views, and literary associations-including neighbors Samuel Richardson and Rudyard Kipling, her cousin...read more

The denouement of Philip Winter's ill-begotten engagement to the feather-brained Rose Birkett is enacted in full view of Southbridge School's extended family during a holiday break. Evidence of Rose's empty head is plain to see when, at tea, "through sheer want of personality," she brings conversation to her own level and insists that Hamlet and Shakespeare are both names of plays, and most probably the same one. Everyone, including her own parents, is rooting for Philip's escape. What they couldn't have hoped for was that Rose, overwhelmed by the sheer dullness of being engaged, would break it off herself.

Product Description: Finished posthumously by her close friend, C. A. Lejeune, Three Score and Ten concludes the Barsetshire series with the birthday party of the heroine of the first novel, Laura Morland, now seventy years old, surrounded by her grown family, her literary legacy, and the same small-town drama that enchanted and amused readers thirty years previously...read more

Product Description: World War II is bringing an end to so many things, but the Marlings of Marling Hall carry on as best they can in the face of rationing and changed living conditions. Into their world erupt Geoffrey Harvey and his sister Frances, bombed out of their London home...read more

Product Description: For those who have read and reread Austen, Trollope and Dickens, discovering a novel by Angela Thirkell is akin to finding gold in an abandoned mine. Long out of print, her novels are currently enjoying a minor renaissance. Before Lunch is a portrait of the charming English community of "Barsetshire," based on the author's own Yoknapatawpha County...read more

Product Description: The irresistible Brandons, their friends, and their servants are full of youthful nonsense and middle-aged folly. People will fall in love with the wrong person, and all are determined to misunderstand each other. Like Barbara Pym, E...read more

Product Description: In the coronation summer of 1838, seventeen-year-old Fanny Harcourt goes to London to stay with her close friend Emily Dacre for the festivities. The young Victoria, scarcely older than Fanny herself, is to assume the throne of England...read more

Product Description: In the coronation summer of 1838, seventeen-year-old Fanny Harcourt goes to London to stay with her close friend Emily Dacre for the festivities. The young Victoria, scarcely older than Fanny herself, is to assume the throne of England...read more