If I love Barbara Pym and Angela Thirkell and grew up wanting to go to Malory Towers...

[PymelaAnderson]

What else might I like? My ultimate escapism is to sit reading about a world where people spend their days pottering, buying cut flowers and wondering who the new curate might marry, or alternatively which country house party to attend. Preferably written during the time the novel is set. Anything jolly hockey sticks or jam and Jerusalem will be considered. Any suggestions please?

Shamelessly place marking!

Have you looked at the website of Persephone books? They publish women writers who had been out of print. They don't all tick your boxes but I think you'll find a few that do such as Miss Buncle's Book; Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Have you tried Mapp & Lucia? Good Evening Mrs Craven? The Mrs Tim series (DE Stevenson)? The Provincial Lady series?

Elizabeth Jane Howard
Elizabeth Taylor
Dorothy Whipple
Saplings by Noel Steatfeild
Dodie Smith's books for adults

Personally I'm working through the Persephone Books catalogue and having a very refined and fabulous time of it.

The writing style is not everyone's cup of tea, but have you tried PG Wodehouse? I find nothing better than a bit of Blandings or Jeeves and Wooster to get stuck into.

I enjoyed Miss Pettigrew lives for a day and I Capture the Castle. I've not read any of the others. Thanks for the suggestions!

Cheerful Weather for a Wedding is very short but fits the bill.

Mavis Cheek's novels are light and funny. Also try Marcia Willett.

Mapp and Lucia are fab. Also working my way through the persephone catalogue here. Also worth googling Virago modern press listings.

Joanna Trollope is a good for modern version

Another recommendation for Persephone Books and Dorothy Whipple in particular. Also Nancy Mitford is great jolly hockey stick fare.

Definitely the Provincial Lady books. Also maybe The Fountain Overflows and sequels by Rebecca West.

Also Cold Comfort Farm if you haven't read it

You need to read everything Rosamund Pilcher has ever written and then some of Joanna Trollope's novels. Should keep you busy.

Also, if you don't mind it being a bit satirical about that world, read the Mapp & Lucia series by FE Benson. Real petty genteel escapism.

Mary Wesley?
I second/ third Mapp and Lucia and anything by PG Wodehouse.
Also Antonia White.

Sorry - just seen loads of other people have already suggested Mapp & Lucia.

Yes was just about to come back and recommend Cold Comfort Farm but I see someone has beaten me to it. There's a few other Stella Gibbons novels that are good too.

Ooh DoraChance, good username- I love Angela Carter! Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Just to add a suggestion of my own- The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Antrim. I didn't love it, but it did fit the bill-four women renting a castle in Italy for a month to get away from it all. Written and set in the 1920s I believe.

I don't mean to try to derail my own thread but clearly we all have this particular type of fiction in common and I've been wondering this evening what it says about me, if anything, that I find this type of novel so escapist! I am a working class lefty feminist, not particularly materialistic, yet my ideal way to relax is to read about middle and upper class women who either go to lots of parties or run church cake sales and are only really interested in gossip and looking after men!

I'm the same Pymela- working class background, leftie and a feminist but I find this type of fiction so satisfying. Weird isn't it! I haven't read The Enchanted April but did pick up another Von Arnim recently called Vera but haven't tried it yet.

As others have said : Persephone books.

Lots of D.E. Stevenson books on kindle cheap
I would also have a look at A.J. Cronin books

Place marking - good thread!

I know this is an old thread, but I've just discovered Margery Sharp a dam devouring her book Cluny Brown. Worth a look!

I listened to Nancy Mitford’s the pursuit of love recently, might fit the bill.

I like Anita Brookner. Her books definitely go into the minutiae of people's lives. They are a little bit melancholic.

This is an old & recently revived thread but for anyone clicking on it looking for ideas, try Molly Keane. Absolutely fits the bill, especially Time after Time:

www.amazon.co.uk/Time-After-Virago-Modern-Classics/dp/1844083276?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

And yes Nancy Mitford & Joanna Trollope too.

I also grew up wanting to go to Mallory Towers. Then I went to boarding school. Forget mid night feasts with sausages and lashings of ginger ale, instead think luke warm curry pot noodles made with water from the sink. Somethings are much better in fiction!

I'm currently reading Ysenda Maxtone-Graham, Terms and Conditions, about girl's experiences of boarding school between 1939 and 1979. Quite a lot of her interviewees grew up to be writers themselves but their experiences weren't so happy.

Some of these books are very appealing and very well written, but people have mentioned books that I would recommend but are actually quite sad. Noel Streatfeild's books for adults, including Saplings, are set in a world that is recognisable to those of us who loved Ballet Shoes and all her other books for children, but it is a hard world to be young/growing up in. Macmillan have republished a lot of Streatfeild in their Bello imprint and I read the Whicharts on my Kindle, featuring 3 orphaned sisters working out how to make a way in the world and lots of other stuff that is reworked in Ballet Shoes.

For anyone who likes this type of book, get thee to Furrowed Middlebrow press. They’re on the dreaded Amazon (other sites are available) and there’s also a blog hosted by the - American, male - founder of the imprint.

He specialises in finding and reprintinting exactly this sort of book. For example, see Elizabeth Fair’s 6 novels, described as ‘by Trollope out of Thirkell’. Or Doris Langley-Moore. Or Ursula Orange (mother of the writer Gillian Tindall). You’ll be in heaven. If poorer