Readalikes:
P.G. Wodehouse, Anthony Trollope, Angela Thirkell, D.E. Stevenson, Jane Austen, Jan Karon.

Setting:
Oxford. Crampton Hodnet is a Bunbury-ish place that Mr. Lattimer pretends to have visited when he is embarrassed to admit that he has been out for a walk with the spinster, Jessie Morrow.

Plot:
The elderly Miss Doggett sees herself as a mentor and advisor to young male students whom she entertains once a term at her house in Oxford.

Miss Doggett’s cousin, a married, middle-aged tutor (professor) at Oxford, Francis Cleveland, falls for a female student, Barbara, who has a crush on him in return.

An unmarried curate, Mr. Lattimer, proposes with confidence to the rather homely and lonely lady’s companion, Jessie Morrow, but his proposal is rejected.

The book is a mild sort of comedy of manners, and I enjoyed it in a mild but delighted sort of way. The characters and their thought processes are the focus of the book, and I thought Barbara Pym was quite insightful as she sketched out in words a flighty and flattered young co-ed, a professor in mid-life crisis, an over-confident suitor, a wise single woman, and an absent-minded wife who rather neglects her husband and takes him for granted. These are all types that I have seen, maybe even types that I have been in some cases, and yet each character stands out as an individual with his or her own quirks and distinctions.

If you enjoy the above listed authors, Barbara Pym should earn a place on your To Be Read list.