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An Unsuitable Attachment is a novel by Barbara Pym, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 1982.[1]
This novel is notable as being the first of Pym's novels to be rejected by publishers after she had established herself as a novelist. The book was originally rejected by Cape, who had published Pym's first six novels.[2] According to some accounts, the reason was its being "out of step with the racier literary climate of the sixties"[1]; others say Cape and possible further publishers viewed it as commercially unviable, even when endorsed by Philip Larkin; - [3] "It was a great pleasure and excitement to me to read An Unsuitable Attachment in typescript and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it continuously amusing and interesting - I have tried to keep my eye open for anything that would suggest why Cape's should not publish it, and I am bound to say that it still seems a mystery to me." [4] This began a period in the literary "wilderness" which ended only in 1978, shortly before the author's death. Pym herself was not satisfied with the work; in a letter to Larkin, she later agreed that the lead character, Ianthe, was "very stiff" and that she had originally intended John to be a "much worse" character.[3]
Larkin wrote that he found himself, " not caring very greatly for Ianthe..her decency and good breeding are stated rather than shown" and further observed, "I don't myself think that the number of the characters matters much; I enjoyed the book's richness in this respect. What I did feel was that there was a certain familiarity about some of them; Sophia and Penelope seemed to recall Jane and Prudence, and Mark Nicholas; Mervyn has something of Arthur Grampian, and of course we have been among the anthropologists before. What this adds up to is perhaps a sense of coasting - which doesn't bother me at all, but which might strike a critical publisher's reader - unsympathetic I mean rather than acute - as constituting 'the mixture as before'."
