Crampton Hodnet
Encyclopedia
Crampton Hodnet is a comic novel by Barbara Pym
, published posthumously in 1985. It was originally written around 1940. "Crampton" was the author's middle name.
. Miss Doggett and her companion Miss Morrow, characters who reappear in another Pym novel, Jane and Prudence
, like to entertain students and young clergy at their Victorian home in Banbury Road which is gloomy and surrounded with laurel bushes. When an unmarried curate, Mr. Latimer, comes to lodge at their house, he sees the homely Jessie Morrow as a suitable potential wife, but she rejects his proposal, knowing that he has no real interest in her. Meanwhile, Miss Doggett's cousin, the don Francis Cleveland, a Reader at the fictitious Randolph College, falls in love with and contemplates an extramarital affair with one of his students, Barbara Bird, but returns disappointed to his wife Margaret.
In the book, Crampton Hodnet is mentioned by Mr. Latimer as a village which he pretends he was visiting when he was actually out walking with Miss Morrow.
Barbara Pym
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In 1977 her career was revived when two prominent writers, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century...
, published posthumously in 1985. It was originally written around 1940. "Crampton" was the author's middle name.
Plot summary
The action takes place in North Oxford, some time before World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Miss Doggett and her companion Miss Morrow, characters who reappear in another Pym novel, Jane and Prudence
Jane and Prudence
Jane and Prudence is a novel by Barbara Pym, first published in 1953 and according to the novelist Jilly Cooper her finest work “ full of wit, plotting, characterization and miraculous observation"-Plot summary:...
, like to entertain students and young clergy at their Victorian home in Banbury Road which is gloomy and surrounded with laurel bushes. When an unmarried curate, Mr. Latimer, comes to lodge at their house, he sees the homely Jessie Morrow as a suitable potential wife, but she rejects his proposal, knowing that he has no real interest in her. Meanwhile, Miss Doggett's cousin, the don Francis Cleveland, a Reader at the fictitious Randolph College, falls in love with and contemplates an extramarital affair with one of his students, Barbara Bird, but returns disappointed to his wife Margaret.
In the book, Crampton Hodnet is mentioned by Mr. Latimer as a village which he pretends he was visiting when he was actually out walking with Miss Morrow.