I’ve been on a bit of a mini Margery Sharp spree this year, having bought up books by her for quite a few years. I’ve read three this year, bringing my total to six – and first bought and read her around 2004, on the advice of P.G. Wodehouse. (By this I mean that he mentions how much he liked The Foolish Gentlewoman in his letters, and I bought a copy after that.) Then there was a gap of about ten years, but I’m making up for lost time.
I wrote about my favourite of this year’s three in August, The Gipsy in the Parlour, and I’ll write about the other two here – Britannia Mews (1946) and Lise Lillywhite (1951).
It’s interesting that she chose the name Britannia Mews rather than Adelaide or similar, because the novel follows Adelaide Culver from childhood to the end of her long life – spent, for the most part, in a house on Britannia Mews. The first few years of her life are in a more reputable street in the mid-nineteenth century, near which Britannia Mews is a slum they scrupulously avoid. Adelaide is brought up strictly and properly by her respectable family, and she is mostly happy with her gilded cage – until she falls in love with her drawing master. One thing leads to another, they elope, and can only afford to live in that self-same Britannia Mews.
I’m reluctant to spoil any of the other things that happen in this excellent novel, as Adelaide finds herself tied to the mews – seeing its fashion change over the years, and her own circle and identity moulded with it. She is isolated from her extended family (though the reader does occasionally pop over to Surbiton to see their honourable lives), and undergoes significant hardship. Characters often don’t change a lot in long novels, as though they are fully-formed from the outset; Sharp shows us exactly what impact these hardships have on the once-naive character of Adelaide. It is far from a miserable novel, but it is a realist one. Some of the characters are lively and witty, but the novel is not itself witty – nothing like Sharp can be in, say, Cluny Brown. But it is very immersive and well-written, and I’ve yet to find a mode of Sharp’s writing that I don’t admire and relish.
Over to Lise Lillywhite – where, curiously, she does get the title despite having relatively little narrative drive. Rather, the novel is about what people think of her and how they treat her – starting off with her being escorted to the family seat in Somerset, having been brought up in France. Her protective – not to say domineering – aunt Amelie controls the parameters of her life, and seeks to control the whole household.
Her relationship with the Somerset Lillywhites is not so familial to prevent one of the family, Martin (the principal narrator) taking a shine to her – and she ends up in a love triangle between him and an exiled Polish count known as Stan. Her own views of them are kept relatively hidden – she remains the object of their affections, in every sense of the word ‘object’. She gets rather less compliant in the second half of the novel, in a very well handled moment where we enter her mind and get sudden access to her long-withheld views. It is very effectively done, and a brave technique to withhold for so long.
The love triangle is one thing – it is engaging, and unexpected – but I also really liked this novel for its portrait of postwar England trying to piece itself together. For the relentless pursuit of nylons, if nothing else.
It’s Sharp in yet another mode – she seems to be endlessly surprising herself, even while all the variant tones she has tried in the novels I’ve read are recognisably from the same pen. There are still plenty of her novels on my shelves yet to read, and I’m looking forward to finding out still more about her.
I adore Margery Sharp. I’ve read almost everything she wrote apart from her first novel. If you’ve not got The Innocents then do not rest until you find it.
I’ve not read it, but I do have it!
I read some of her books decades ago but enjoyed Britannia Mews fairly recently and intend to read The Foolish Gentlewoman soon. I like to buy old copies of her books but they aren’t very easy to find in bookshops.
Good luck! Some of her books are available as ebooks and POD, but I have high hopes more will be in print eventually!
I found my copy of Cluny Brown in a local Oxfam bookshop. 1947 reprint for £2.99. Someone had tucked a poem inside the pages dated 1958. A delight. I hope you find a copy of your own soon.
Do you have any idea what a treat it is that you are reading and writing about her?! I’ve bookmarked this entry in my “book ideas” folder. Thank you.
That’s lovely, thanks Nan!
Can’t remember if you’ve read Britannia Mews. I love her books but think it
is the best.
Was that the book you meant? Because this review is of it ;)
I’d really like to try something by Margery Sharp at some point as she sounds like an author I would appreciate. Which one would you suggest as a good entry point/example of her style? The Gipsy in the Parlour or one of the other three you read a while ago?
I think Cluny Brown would be a great place to start, if you bear in mind that she is sometimes much more serious! But I don’t think any of my first six would have put me off her, by any means.
My entry point was Cluny Brown and it remains up there with my favourites which also include Something Light, The Eye of Love (trilogy) and The Innocents which is difficult to find but well worth the effort.
Cluny Brown is such a delight, isn’t it?
I adore Margery Sharp but I’m yet to read either of these. Two more days til my book-buying ban is over and then some more Sharp acquisition is definitely on the list!
Excellent! I’m definitely glad I’ve stockpiled over the years and have a few left on my shelf.
I’ve only read Cluny Brown but just received The Nutmeg Tree for Christmas, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Now I’ll have to add all the others to the TBR list!
Oh lovely! I don’t have that one, but look forward to hearing about it.
Well, this is a hole in my education. I must read one of her books!
Hope you manage to find one!
I also read and was delighted by several Margery Sharp novels this year but there was no overlap with your reading. How nice to know I have these to look forward to! (And you have the four I read – Four Gardens, Something Light, The Flowering Thorn and The Sun in Scorpio – awaiting you).
I thoroughly enjoyed Britannia Mews a coupe of years ago, a really old fashioned novel I suppose, in the best kind of way. I have a couple of Margery Sharp novels on my kindle, after reading reviews of them elsewhere. I really enjoyed The Foolish Gentlewoman and I read The Innocent too which I liked but I think I had some reservations about. I must read more soon.
I have The Eye of Love on my TBR thanks to the lovely Kaggsy!
I’ve just read one Margery Sharp, Martha, Eric, and George, and I suspect it isn’t one of her best but it filled a spot for me for ACOB. I own Britannia Mews and it sounds like a novel I would like.
I think you’ll find that Martha, Eric and George is the third in the ‘Martha’ trilogy and I feel sure you would have enjoyed it much more if you’d read the other two first. The first in the series is The Eye of Love, followed by Martha in Paris.
Thanks for introducing me to Cluny Brown – absolute joy. She is a rare heroine that grabs you from the first page – like Anne of Green Gables. The book is full of little asides that tell you more about class and the complacency/denial that gripped England before WW2 that many history tomes do.
Hi Linda
My first M.S. was also Cluny Brown and it’s still a favourite but at the top of the list is The Innocents which never seems to have enjoyed the praise I think it derserves. This is another that absolutely grips you from the first page. I think M.S. was brilliant at opening paragraphs.