Books like Diary of a Provincial Lady

Mildred Lathbury is the natural companion to the Provincial Lady: observant, capable, habitually enlisted in other people’s problems, and far funnier than those around her realize. In postwar London, new neighbors and parish obligations give her ample opportunity to notice the vanity hidden inside good manners. Pym’s comedy lives in tiny things—cups of tea, jumble sales, tactful pauses—and in the distance between what Mildred says and what she understands.

Yet this is not merely cozy social comedy. Mildred’s usefulness has become a way of making herself nearly invisible, and Pym lets loneliness and desire show through without sacrificing her exquisite deadpan. Philip Larkin helped rescue Pym from neglect, and this much-loved novel makes the justice of that revival obvious: every rereading uncovers another barb, another pang, another perfectly chosen qualification.

Charles Pooter begins keeping a diary because he cannot see why the public should be deprived of his experiences. That premise creates a glorious inversion of Delafield’s method: where the Provincial Lady recognizes her own absurdities, Pooter records his with unwavering dignity. His home, minor social engagements and small grievances assume epic importance, while the reader sees everything he does not.

First serialized in Punch, the Grossmiths’ comic novel proved so durable that “Pooterish” entered the language as a name for solemn, respectable self-importance. Its greatness lies in its lack of cruelty. Pooter is ridiculous, but his wish for order and recognition is painfully human; before long, every petty humiliation feels both hilarious and momentous. Anyone who loves Delafield’s ability to build comedy from bills, visitors and wounded pride should read one of its indispensable ancestors.

Macaulay begins with an eccentric aunt, a camel and an expedition to Turkey, all described by a narrator whose composure makes the absurdity twice as funny. The scale is more adventurous than Delafield’s, but the comic intelligence is closely related: brisk, elliptical and alert to the preposterous ways people protect their preferred versions of themselves.

Then the novel quietly reveals how much that wit is protecting. Religious doubt, compromised love and self-knowledge gather beneath the travel comedy, giving the narrator’s lightness an unexpected ache. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, it has one of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century fiction—mischievous, erudite and emotionally evasive until evasion itself becomes moving. It is the ideal next step for a reader who suspects the Provincial Lady’s funniest remarks are also her most revealing.