Reunited after years of separation during World War II, Stephen and Laura Marshall and their daughter Victoria, try to forget the hardships of the past and look to the promises of the future

One Fine Day (Virago Modern Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Panter-Downes, Mollie

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

From dust jacket notes: "For most Americans, the Second World War started on December 7, 1941, and much of the fighting took place in strange, faraway places. For the British, the war started on September 3, 1939, and much of the action took place in the skies over England. In the spring of 1940, after months of uneasy calm, Germany invaded the Lowlands and conquered France within a few days, leaving England without her only meaningful ally on the Continent. A year would pass before the Soviet Union was drawn into the war, and eighteen months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The United Kingdom, with a land area about the size of Wyoming, was alone, all alone, with only the Straits of Dover separating the island from Hitler's war machine. For six years Mollie Panter-Downes covered the war for The New Yorker magazine from her native England. Even at the height of the air war over London, when 'all that is best in the good life of civilized effort appears to be slowly and painfully keeling over,' she continued to file her fortnightly reports in an understated but dramatic fashion that reflected the fortitude of her fellow countrymen: 'The announcements of the first air-raid deaths are beginning to appear in the obituary columns of the morning papers. No mention is made of the cause of death, but the conventional phrase "very suddenly" is always used.' William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker, has assembled Miss Panter-Downes' 'Letter from London' columns into a consecutive, on-the-spot chronicle of the war in England."

London War Notes, 1939-1945

History

Military

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Preserved...and rather charmingly commemorated in this quintessentially Victorian village in the Blue Hills of South India--the Queen of the Hill Stations (superseding Kipling's Simla)--a little "patch of England" where the sun has never set. Mrs. Panter-Downes makes a tour of Ootacumund, Ooty, lovely Ooty from its 19th-century existence as a small spiritual spa with tonic air for English exiles to today, with its dwindling number of Europeans (chiefly widows and daughters) and the faint encroachment of modern times--a film factory. Around she goes, from its Government House to its Library to its Club to its Old cemetery which Sir Richard Burton said was already "so extensive, so well stocked" over a hundred years ago. Along with its photographs (some of old aquatints) this is a somewhat pleasing but limited literary daguerrotype with amusing period appointments. Partial New Yorker appearance.--Kirkus

Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station in India

Asia

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

<div>My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London. Soon friendship develops into love. Inevitably the problem faces her. Wife or mistress? Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control. Published in 1931 in the immediate aftermath of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover controversy, Mollie Panter-Downes's book explores the different echelons of the increasingly self-conscious middle class and the ways in which the tensions and nuances of vocabulary, dress, occupation, politics, taste and, ultimately, the literary world contribute to the incompatibility of a marriage. Part of a curated collection of forgotten works by early to mid-century women writers, the British Library Women Writers series highlights the best middlebrow fiction from the 1910s to the 1960s, offering escapism, popular appeal and plenty of period detail to amuse, surprise and inform.</div>

My Husband Simon (British Library Women Writers)

Literary

British Library Publishing

KIRKUS REVIEWPreserved...and rather charmingly commemorated in this quintessentially Victorian village in the Blue Hills of South India--the Queen of the Hill Stations (superseding Kipling's Simla)--a little ""patch of England"" where the sun has never set. Mrs. Panter-Downes makes a tour of Ootacumund, Ooty, lovely Ooty"" from its 19th-century existence as a small spiritual spa with tonic air for English exiles to today, with its dwindling number of Europeans (chiefly widows and daughters) and the faint encroachment of modern times--a film factory. Around she goes, from its Government House to its Library to its Club to its Old cemetery which Sir Richard Burton said was already ""so extensive, so well stocked"" over a hundred years ago. Along with its photographs (some of old aquatints) this is a somewhat pleasing but limited literary daguerrotype with amusing period appointments. Partial New Yorker appearance.

Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

The " New Yorker" Book of War Pieces: London 1939 to Hiroshima 1945

Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, this volume documents the war years through the writings of various distinguished American journalists. The volume includes Mollie Panter-Downes' letters from London and John Hersey's account of Hiroshima.

Flanner, Janet

Liebling, A.J., et al

BLOOMSBURY

It's a summer's day in 1946. The English village of Wealding is no longer troubled by distant sirens, yet the rustling coils of barbed wire are a reminder that something, some quality of life, has evaporated. Together again after years of separation, Laura and Stephen Marshall and their daughter Victoria are forced to manage without "those anonymous caps and aprons who lived out of sight and pulled the strings." Their rambling garden refuses to be tamed, the house seems perceptibly to crumble. But alone on a hillside, as evening falls, Laura comes to see what it would have meant if the war had been lost, and looks to the future with a new hope and optimism. First published in 1947, this subtle, finely wrought novel presents a memorable portrait of the aftermath of war, its effect upon a marriage, and the gradual but significant change in the nature of English middle-class life.

Virago UK

At The Pines: Swinburne and Watts-Dunton in Putney

Gambit

“Boldly published, beautifully designed, dazzlingly written. . . . Profound as Katherine Mansfield, restrained as Jane Austen, sharp as Dorothy Parker.”—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Independent
For fifty years, Mollie Panter-Downes’ name was associated with The New Yorker. She wrote a regular column (“Letter from London”), book reviews, and over thirty short stories about English domestic life during World War Two. Twenty-one of these stories are included in Good Evening Mrs Craven—the first collected volume of her work.
Mollie Panter-Downes writes about those coping on the periphery of the war who attend sewing parties, host evacuees sent to the country, and obsess over food and rationing. She captures the quiet moments of fear and courage. Here we find “the mistress, unlike the wife, who has to worry and mourn in secret for her man” and a “middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camaraderie of the air-raids is over.”
“Don’t think I’m being stupid and morbid,” she said, “but supposing anything happens. . . . You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn’t know.” She tried to laugh. “The War Office doesn’t have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?”
Mollie Panter-Downes (1906–1997) published her first novel, The Shoreless Sea, when she was seventeen, which became a bestseller. She wrote three more popular novels as well as articles, short stories, and the very popular column “Letters from London” for The New Yorker.

Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Persephone Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Panter-Downes, Mollie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Panter-Downes, Mollie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Panter-Downes, Mollie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

One Fine Day (Virago Modern Classics)

London War Notes, 1939-1945

Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station in India

My Husband Simon (British Library Women Writers)

Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station

The " New Yorker" Book of War Pieces: London 1939 to Hiroshima 1945

One Fine Day (Virago Modern Classics)

At The Pines: Swinburne and Watts-Dunton in Putney

Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes