E. M. Delafield

The Essential Classics: Volume 8 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Emma Gregory, Lucy Scott, Mark Meadows, and Rachel Atkins.

The Provincial Lady in Wartime covers a short time - from 1 September 1939 (just before the declaration of war on 3 September) to 21 November 1939 when fact again met fiction and E. M. Delafield was really ‘called up’ to work for the Ministry of Information....

No one could have been more surprised than our Provincial Lady to receive an invitation from her American agent to travel transatlantic and embark upon a programme of lectures and signings....

The Provincial Lady Goes Further is the immediate sequel to Diary of a Provincial Lady - and life mirrors art....

Bridget Jones's Diary could not have existed without her sometimes arch, often lofty, but deeply English upper middle class forbear. Diary of a Provincial Lady is a classic of its time....

It's not easy being a Provincial Lady in Devonshire in the 1920s, juggling a grumpy husband, mischievous children and a host of domestic dilemmas - from rice mould to a petulant cook. But this Provincial Lady will not be defeated....

In the pens of such luminaries as Henry James, E M Delafield, C E Montague, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and many others we connect with old fashioned media from publishing and advertising to telegrams and radio and everything in between in ways that are surprising, enlightening but always entertaining.

Laura Temple faces the predicaments of many British middle-class wives and mothers living in country villages between the World Wars.