Out of routine and small moments of modest, unfulfilled lives, Barbara Pym created a fine and sensitive comedy that delicately catches the way we sustain interest in our own lives and those of others, grow and are illuminated, and bear with loneliness and age. This study shows the perceptiveness of her sexual comedy and her awareness of social change, as well as her subtle and sophisticated use of language and narrative form. Michael Cotsell places Pym among the great explorers of human value in the modern world.