The Barbara Pym Society in North America

2008 Conference
12-13 April at the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS)
Cambridge, Massachusetts

“He Was Far  Too Handsome To Be Let Loose in a Small Town.”
Glamorous and Not-So-Glamorous Foreigners in Pym’s Fiction.

by Dr. Eleonore Biber

Pym’s spectrum of foreigners

Continental charmers:

Stefan Tilos: Civil to Strangers
Bill Sedge: No Fond Return of Love
“The German Baron”
The Dottore: An Unsuitable Attachment
Count Ricardo Bianco: Some Tame Gazelle 

Scandinavians

“Gervase and Flora”

 Spectators and commentators

Senhor Luiz MacBride Pereira: No Fond Return of Love
Jean-Pierre le Rossignol: No Fond Return of Love

 Exotics

Coco and Kitty Jeffreys: An Academic Question
Mr. Olatunde: Quartet in Autumn

 Evil foreigners

Frau Hilde Nussbaum: “So Very Secret”
Ned: The Sweet Dove Died, “Across a Crowded Room”

Note: Titles in quotations are short stories, published in Civil to Strangers


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