- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd (8 May 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743208013
- ISBN-13: 978-0743208017
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.6 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 852,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Mrs P's Journey is the enchanting story of Phyllis Pearsall. Born Phyllis Isobella Gross, her lifelong nickname was PIG. The artist daughter of a flamboyant Huangarian Jewish immigrant, and an Irish Italian mother, her bizarre and often traumatic childhood did not restrain her from becoming one of Britain's most intriguing entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires. After an unsatisfactory marriage, Phyllis, a thirty-year-old divorcee, has to support herself and so becomes a portrait painter. It is doing this job and trying to find her patron's houses that Phyllis becomes increasingly frustrated at the lack of proper maps of London. Instead of just cursing the fact as many fellow Londoners probably did, Phyllis decided to do something about it. Without hesitation she covered London's 23,000 streets on foot during the course of one year, often leaving her Farringdon bedsit at dawn to do so. To publish the map, and in light of its enormous success, she sets up her own company, The Geographer's Trust, which still publishes the London A-Z and that of every major British city. Mrs P's Journey is the account of a strong, independent woman who has left behind an enduring legacy.
About the Author
Sarah Hartley is commissioning editor at the Daily Mail. Prior to that she worked on Tatler, Frank and most recently The Times. This is her first book.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mrs.P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map (Paperback)
What attracted me to this book was the prospect of reading about the development of the A-Z map. Maybe I didn't read between the lines of the front cover properly. Anyway, I didn't really expect to spend quite so long reading about Mrs P's parents. It is not until page 204 that Mrs P decides to write the A-Z, and when it happens there is not enough detail. I admit that Mrs P's early life is interesting but I found the emphasis rather poorly balanced considering the book's main selling point. It is also written in a rather confusing manner. Has Sarah Hartley not heard of chronological order? While it moves froward in time in a general manner the narrative constantly flits backwards and forwards a few years, often leaving one confused as to what exactly has happened. Massive potential here in the subject but could have been executed better.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Appallingly badly written,
By
This review is from: Mrs.P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map (Paperback)
I had to give up on reading this book. It was full of conjecture but all too often that is true of biographies, but what made it completely unreadable was the atrociously poor standard of English. It actually contained malapropisms! On every page there were passages which I can only describe as nonsense. Her father, as a young man, goes into a cafe where her mother, then a young girl, was waitressing. Her father noticed the the waitress is rather plain, and in the next sentence has proposed to her! It seems that the author made no attempt at all to think abuot what she was writing. It reads like a poor first draft. How on earth does such a poorly written book get published?
Don't waste your money, or your time, on this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Completely misses the point,
By
This review is from: Mrs.P's Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map (Paperback)
I was very disappointed with this book. Clearly Ms Hartley fell in love with Mrs Pearsall's dysfunctional (but not actually very interesting) parents and spends most of the book talking about them. It takes the first 200 pages to get to the A to Z and then there is only a token discussion, if anything it shows how little research or passion the author has about mapmaking or the geography of London. The book requires significant editing and as other reviewers have noted it is very poorly structured. My best guess is that Ms H wrote a magazine length article in Chapter 24 and then got so fascinated with the family, she chose to write the remaining 30 odd chapters around it. Dont bother buying it.
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