Fran will be sending pre-assigned readings ahead of her presentation, so please let her know if you are NOT able to attend. (This will cut down on the number of emails Fran will receive.) Have a lovely weekend! Jacquie
Barbara's Minutes
Query: Could a Zoom meeting, like the Literature Club meeting of September 30, be re-created as a comedy of manners? The writer of these minutes wonders how the Provincial Lady, the leading character in the novels in today’s presentation, would have managed it. Perhaps she might have made a note to self about how lovely Diana Jaeger looked wearing a fascinator, but with a rueful acknowledgment that if she got one, the effect might not be the same. Or could she have developed something out of the list of books we recommended during our book chat, which ranged from Anna Karenina to the new collection of stories by Edwidge Danticat? Surely, she would have passed over in silence that the minutes were accepted as read and the treasury was again at $285.67.
Fran Greenberg captured in her presentation the light yet observant touch of the English writer E.M. Delafield, who created in Diary of a Provincial Lady an immensely charming character, whose life was filled with mishaps that she faced with an unfailing sense of the comic. As Fran said, the Provincial Lady confesses to the petty emotions which really drive our lives. She finds her children baffling and sometimes annoying, her husband a silent enigma; she is intimidated both by her cook and by the know-it-all Lady Box; and she struggles to conceal how tiresome she finds many of her neighbors.
The Diary of a Provincial Lady was serialized in the left-leaning, feminist magazine Time and Tide, and published as a collection in 1930. It was an immediate best seller. Delafield followed it up with three more volumes, but Fran commented that the only Provincial Lady that rivals the liveliness of the Diary is The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Delafield influenced other writers who wrote about the domestic front, including Shirley Jackson, whom Laura Rice presented at our previous meeting.
Fran shared details of Delafield’s not always easy life, and of her literary output, which included serious novels and criticism. We then delighted in reading passages from Diary of a Provincial Lady.
Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary
The Diary of a Provincial Lady was serialized in the left-leaning, feminist magazine Time and Tide, and published as a collection in 1930. It was an immediate best seller. Delafield followed it up with three more volumes, but Fran commented that the only Provincial Lady that rivals the liveliness of the Diary is The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Delafield influenced other writers who wrote about the domestic front, including Shirley Jackson, whom Laura Rice presented at our previous meeting.
Fran shared details of Delafield’s not always easy life, and of her literary output, which included serious novels and criticism. We then delighted in reading passages from Diary of a Provincial Lady.
Respectfully submitted, Barbara Morrow, Recording Secretary
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