Barbara Pym, who died in 1980, spent the last years of her life in an Oxfordshire village, sharing a small cottage with her sister. Between 1950 and 1961 she published six novels. After a gap of sixteen years, publication of 'Quartet in Autumn' in 1977 was treated as a major literary event, as was her next novel, 'The Sweet Dove Died'. Four more novels were published posthumously, as was 'Civil to Strangers', a collection of writings including one complete novel and sections of three others.