E. M. Delafield

Written in diary form, The Provincial Lady is a witty, semi-autobiographical novel packed with sharp and humorous observations about upper-middle-class society. Set in the English countryside in the 1930s, The Provincial Lady introduces us to a protagonist with a sharp eye, but even sharper wit.

Bridget Jones's Diary could not have existed without her sometimes arch, often lofty, but deeply English upper middle class forbear. Diary of a Provincial Lady is a classic of its time....

No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings....

The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939 when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really ‘called up’ to work for the Ministry of Information....

The Provincial Lady Goes Further is the immediate sequel to Diary of a Provincial Lady - and life mirrors art....

Laura Temple faces the predicaments of many British middle-class wives and mothers living in country villages between the World Wars.

In the pens of such luminaries as Henry James, E M Delafield, C E Montague, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and many others we connect with old fashioned media from publishing and advertising to telegrams and radio and everything in between in ways that are surprising, enlightening but always entertaining.