On November 12, 2004 a number of Midwest members of the Barbara Pym Society and about twenty new readers of Barbara Pym gathered at Ellen Barreto's home in Chicago to discuss and celebrate Pym's Booker Prize-nominated novel Quartet in Autumn. The talk was led by Dr. Frauke Elisabeth Lenckos, who brought along several of her students. These women had just completed the study of Pym's The Sweet Dove Died in Dr. Lenckos's seminar on Austen and Modern Women Writers at the University of Chicago and the Newberry Library and were eager to read more by an author they had recently discovered and come to appreciate very much. Several had already gone on to read Excellent Women and A Few Green Leaves.

All participants had gone through the trouble of finding their copy of the out-of-print novel, because they wanted to read what is considered to be the author's "masterpiece" by such authorities as John Updike, Anne Tyler, and Barbara Everett. Conversation was lively, passionate and lasted late into the evening, when guests convened over tea and a beautiful cake supplied by Ellen Barreto, decorated with the Quartet in Autumn title and some beautiful, autumnal-looking sugar flowers.

Frauke Elisabeth Lenckos