Crampton Hodnet

Crampton Hodnet is a consummate farce - constructed, in recognizably "Pym" fashion, around a pair of unsuitable attachments. The first involves a young curate and Miss Morrow, who are both residents at Miss Doggett's home, Leamington Lodge. Their attempt to provide a plausibly innocent account of a late afternoon excursion into the woods outside Oxford gives rise to the fanciful creation of a nonexistent vicar and village - the Crampton Hodnet of the title. The second romance is that between a starry-eyed professor and his female student, who is continually falling into traps of her own devising. In Crampton Hodnet Pym created characters and prototypes that were to reappear time and again in her late novels. Here are early versions of her famous clergymen and excellent women; the originals of Miss Doggett and Jessie Morrow from Jane and Prudence; and a new group of characters - a very distinctively "Oxford" cast of university dons, ingenuous students, and academic hangers-on. Barbara Pym poured much of the exuberance of her Oxford years into these pages, and the hilarious result will add a new dimension to her reputation.