Private Enterprise - Paperback

by Angela Thirkell (Author)

Amid food shortages and grumbling, Barsetshire is unsettled by the arrival of a pretty war widow in this "delicately humorous [and] entertaining" novel (The New York Times).

World War II may be over, but its effects linger in the English countryside as the local ladies trade ration coupons for a paltry selection of provisions. It's feeling like a bleak summer--but it won't be a boring one, now that flirtatious young widow Peggy Arbuthnot and her sister-in-law, Effie, are on the scene. Peggy has quite a few admirers--including Noel Merton, which is rather unfortunate for his wife. Suspense reigns over who might win Peggy's hand--and whether the Merton marriage will survive . . .

"Where Trollope would have been content to arouse a chuckle, [Thirkell] is constantly provoking us to hilarious laughter. . . . To read her is to get the feeling of knowing Barsetshire folk as well as if one had been born and bred in the county." --Kirkus Reviews

Author Biography

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was a British author whose ability to produce one book a year, every year, and set in that year blurred the lines between novelist and social historian. Like so many of the writers that she admired--Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot--Thirkell shared their X-ray vision: an unmatched ability to assess the hypocrisies, desires, and prejudices of her characters and, better still, play them for laughs. Her biggest literary project, the Barsetshire Chronicles, consists of twenty-nine novels, each acting as another slice of English country life; a utopian vision of bucolic countryside, grand manors, and village fêtes.