Private Enterprise
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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
Angela Thirkell
Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) was the eldest daughter of John William Mackail, a Scottish classical scholar and civil servant, and Margaret Burne-Jones. Her relatives included the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin, and her grandfather was J. M. Barrie. She was educated in London and Paris, and began publishing articles and stories in the 1920s. In 1931 she brought out her first book, a memoir entitled Three Houses, and in 1933 her comic novel High Rising - set in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope - met with great success. She went on to write nearly thirty Barsetshire novels, as well as several further works of fiction and non-fiction. She was twice married and had four children.
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