- Paperback: 536 pages
- Publisher: Persephone Books Ltd; New edition edition (22 Mar 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1903155304
- ISBN-13: 978-1903155301
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 14.2 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 244,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Priory for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
Product Description
Book Description
The setting for The Priory is a large house ‘somewhere in England’, partly modelled on Newstead Abbey near Nottingham where Dorothy Whipple had a weekend cottage and partly on Parciau, the house on Anglesey where she stayed in 1934. And, as David Conville, who used to stay at Parciau as a child, writes in his Afterword: ‘The Parciau inhabitants in The Priory were hardly disguised.’
At the beginning of the book we see Saunby Priory: its ‘West Front, built in the thirteenth century for the service of God and the poor, towered above the house that had been raised alongside from its ruins, from its very stones. And because no light showed from any window here, the stranger, visiting Saunby at this hour, would have concluded that the house was empty. But he would have been wrong. There were many people within.’
The sentence is typical of the opening of a Dorothy Whipple novel. Gently, deceptively gently, but straightforwardly, it sets the scene and draws the reader in. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt. Then, as soon as their lives have been evoked, we see the Major proposing marriage to a woman much younger than himself; and we understand how much will have to change.
It is a classic plot (albeit the stepmother is more disinterested than wicked) and the book has many classic qualities; yet there are no clichés either in situation or outlook, just an extraordinarily well-written and absorbing novel by the writer who has been called the twentieth-century Mrs Gaskell.
Above all, The Priory is a very subtle novel, so subtle that, as with all Dorothy Whipple’s books, it is very easy to miss what an excellent writer she is. As Books magazine wrote in August 1939: ‘Because it is so unaffectedly and well-written, and because it conveys very effectively a sense of the old house and what it meant to be the various persons connected with it, The Priory carries a punch out of proportion to its otherwise artless-seeming content.’ And Forrest Reid, the Irish novelist and friend of EM Forster, described it in the Spectator as being ‘brilliantly original and convincing. It is fresh, delightful, absorbing, and one accepts it with gratitude as one did the novels read in boyhood.’
At the beginning of the book we see Saunby Priory: its ‘West Front, built in the thirteenth century for the service of God and the poor, towered above the house that had been raised alongside from its ruins, from its very stones. And because no light showed from any window here, the stranger, visiting Saunby at this hour, would have concluded that the house was empty. But he would have been wrong. There were many people within.’
The sentence is typical of the opening of a Dorothy Whipple novel. Gently, deceptively gently, but straightforwardly, it sets the scene and draws the reader in. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt. Then, as soon as their lives have been evoked, we see the Major proposing marriage to a woman much younger than himself; and we understand how much will have to change.
It is a classic plot (albeit the stepmother is more disinterested than wicked) and the book has many classic qualities; yet there are no clichés either in situation or outlook, just an extraordinarily well-written and absorbing novel by the writer who has been called the twentieth-century Mrs Gaskell.
Above all, The Priory is a very subtle novel, so subtle that, as with all Dorothy Whipple’s books, it is very easy to miss what an excellent writer she is. As Books magazine wrote in August 1939: ‘Because it is so unaffectedly and well-written, and because it conveys very effectively a sense of the old house and what it meant to be the various persons connected with it, The Priory carries a punch out of proportion to its otherwise artless-seeming content.’ And Forrest Reid, the Irish novelist and friend of EM Forster, described it in the Spectator as being ‘brilliantly original and convincing. It is fresh, delightful, absorbing, and one accepts it with gratitude as one did the novels read in boyhood.’
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
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
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's a tragedy that Dorothy Whipple isn't more well known, because all of her books are superbly crafted portrayals of people so real you could almost reach into the pages and touch them. Like Jane Austen, she had that remarkable skill of being able to breathe life into her words, managing to create characters and situations that are completely relatable to everyday life, effortlessly transcending time, age and social status. Everyone knows somebody like the characters in this book; everyone can relate to some extent with the events that happen; because of this, you genuinely care for the people this novel is centred around; you want them to be happy, you want it all to work out; you understand their hopes, their fears, and their dreams, and this is what makes The Priory a page turner of the most literal kind.
The Priory concerns the Marwood family and their servants, who live in The Priory of the title, and the other people that over the course of the novel come into their lives and change them, for the worse or the better. They are very ordinary people; no one does anything particularly exciting, or special, or ground breaking, but it is because of this that their lives are so engrossing. They are just ordinary people, like us, with their own faults and failures, and how they choose to live their lives and deal with the situations that come their way is mainly the concern of this wonderful, character driven novel. It is set in 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, and the fear and tension underneath the surface of this novel, of a world about to change, is not so different from today. We might not have an army of servants behind our own green baize doors any more, but take away the period detail and you will find a timeless story that cannot fail to touch you and leave you wanting far more pages to turn that those it contains. Absolutely marvellous.
The Priory concerns the Marwood family and their servants, who live in The Priory of the title, and the other people that over the course of the novel come into their lives and change them, for the worse or the better. They are very ordinary people; no one does anything particularly exciting, or special, or ground breaking, but it is because of this that their lives are so engrossing. They are just ordinary people, like us, with their own faults and failures, and how they choose to live their lives and deal with the situations that come their way is mainly the concern of this wonderful, character driven novel. It is set in 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, and the fear and tension underneath the surface of this novel, of a world about to change, is not so different from today. We might not have an army of servants behind our own green baize doors any more, but take away the period detail and you will find a timeless story that cannot fail to touch you and leave you wanting far more pages to turn that those it contains. Absolutely marvellous.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Just like the Virago Modern Classics such as The Constant Nymph in the early 1980s, the Persephone reprints are an inspiration to me as a novelist in the 21st century. So much modern women's fiction is one-track - a romance predictable from the first glowering sentence. Women's fiction in the 20th century had meaning and purpose, detail and interesting minor characters. So many young men lost in both world wars. Who did you marry when there were not enough young men to go around and the pit props and expectations of your class (gentry, upper middle, call it what you will...) were crumbling in trenches and on battle fields? The Priory is a place where you still have servants and expectations, but everything else has been swept away. Brilliant. Read it if you are interested in women and the 20th century from which we all emerge.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Priory is, I think, may favourite Whipple. The characters are so vivid and personalities change subtley as they age, as do one's opinions of them. The author creates such sensual, detailed images of her scenes that you can almost smell the old house where the story unfolds. I do not understand why I had never heard of Dorothy Whipple until recently. I have passed The Priory on to many friends and they all agree - once you have read a Whipple you are hooked.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Ultimately absorbing story about the position of women in 1930s...
I so loved previous books I'd read by Dorothy Whipple that I was disappointed at first by The Priory, a novel set in the 1930s, before the start of the second World War. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Suzie
Moving and literate
I love all of Dorothy Whipple's books - they are real page turners yet at the same time literate and clever. She writes especially well about children. Read more
Published on 10 May 2010 by Valerie Cole
The Priory and its Inhabitants
'The Priory' is another wonderful, and wonderfully readable book by the excellent Dorothy Whipple. The Priory, a large house inhabited by members of the Marwood Family, becomes... Read more
Published on 10 Sep 2009 by Miss Mapp
A wonderful find
The people who live in The Priory are real and the novel is finely crafted with various interwoven stories. Read more
Published on 28 Aug 2006 by aapjebaapje
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.
