One of Barbara Pym’s final novels, ‘The Sweet Dove Died’

”[Pym's biographer] wisely judges Pym’s masterpiece to be not Excellent Women, the conventional choice, but The Sweet Dove Died.... A fearless novel.“ —Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker THE SWEET DOVE DIED Barbara Pym Introduction by Susie Boyt The Sweet Dove Died is one of Barbara Pym's last novels, in which her work took on a new, keen edge. It is about a woman's attachment to a man much younger than herself. Beautiful and self-absorbed, Leonora Eyre has a passion for collecting Victorian objects and is coolly indifferent towards everything outside of her fastidious, elegant existence. When she is courted by Humphrey, a widowed antiques dealer, she disdains his advances, preferring rather the attentions of his twenty-four-year-old nephew, James. Leonora’s possession of James is challenged, however, first by Phoebe, a bookish young woman his own age, and then by the suave and seductive Ned, a visiting American professor with whom James quickly becomes infatuated. Pym’s sharp eye for comedy and shrewd observation of English manners are on full display in this finely wrought novel of love, loss, and all the hopes and disappointments that befall the human heart. The Sweet Dove Died is the October 2025 selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club. BUY THE BOOK   For three days only, The Sweet Dove Died is available at 25% off along with four other novels by twentieth-century British women writers: THE PUMPKIN EATER Penelope Mortimer BUY THE BOOK MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT Elizabeth Taylor BUY THE BOOK THE JUNIPER TREE Barbara Comyns BUY THE BOOK LOLLY WILLOWES Sylvia Townsend Warner BUY THE BOOK You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences   New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street New York, NY 10016-6305 Not a subscriber? Sign up for our newsletter here. Unsubscribe