| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
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 Hungarian 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, had to support herself and so became a portrait painter. It is doing this job and trying to find her patron's houses that Phyllis became 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 Horseferry Road 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.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format: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
Format: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.
Don't waste your money, or your time, on this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Mrs. P's Journey
Our book club chose this book because one of our number is a London bus fanatic and we thought he would find this account of mapping London streets particularly interesting. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Gilly
Mrs.P's Journey
Didn't finish this, I found it tedious. Not a lot about how she did the A-Z, more about her weird family.Some stuff did not ring true so I thought half of it was made up.
Published 23 months ago
Mrs P's Journey
Mrs P's Journey is the true story of how Mrs P, a courageous tenacious lady set about charting and mapping in detail geographical districts of London, giving birth to what we now... Read more
Published on 15 July 2009 by Mrs. S. M. Elkington
confusing
This is an unusual book, in as much as the author seems more interested in writing an emotional story of a stressful childhood and eventual triumph rather than an biography. Read more
Published on 12 Sep 2008 by michelle ann
If I could give it half a star I would be happier,
This is an object lesson in how to make a potentially interesting subject very dull indeed. The author rambles with no thought for chronology and has created a very convoluted... Read more
Published on 22 Nov 2007 by Babs
Intriguing little book
I don't often read biographies, precisely because I find the need to back every point up with dates, places and name dropping gets in the way of the characters. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2007 by Jaybird
How NOT to write a biography
This is an extraordinarily badly-written book, doing the subject no favours at all. There are countless factual and chronological errors (such as having a hospital full of war... Read more
Published on 2 Jun 2005 by R. L. Smith
Interesting subject, poorly written
While I was intrigued by the life Ms. Pearsall seemingly led, the writing of this 'biography' really lets her down. Ms. Hartley jumps around in time so the reader is confused. Read more
Published on 27 April 2005
An absorbing account of this remarkable woman's life.
Right from the beginning of this book I was absorbed into the chaos of Phyllis Pearsall's family. Both she and her father were inveterate liars and throughout the book the reader... Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2001
Amazing how little feet took one so far.
... Read this book. You will not be disappointed... an excellent tale. Historical accuracy (if, Miss Hartley has not represented fact correctly) is, quite frankly, irrelevant in... Read more
Published on 1 Sep 2001
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
