Book description
In
The Philistines
, Pamela Hansford Johnson tells the story of a young woman who, on
impulse, marries into surroundings not her own. Despite the boredom of
the surburban world in which she finds herself, she remains content with
life until, during the war, she falls in love. And though her love
affair offers no more complete satisfaction than her marriage; though
the great passion of her life is, in fact, a one-sided one; she
tolerates this as she tolerated the drabness of her married life.
The Philistines
is a subtle and penetrating study of a lively, witty woman of energetic
mind who found in a shadow what she could not find in substance; a woman
whose own resilience prevents her troubles from growing into the tragedy
by which a lesser woman might have been engulfed.
Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote 27 novels across genres as diverse as
romance, comedy and tragedy. An incredibly readable and literary author,
who deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation, Bello has brought
18 of Johnson's books back into print. Pamela Hansford Johnson was
born in 1912 and gained recognition with her first novel, This Bed Thy
Centre, published in 1935. She wrote 27 novels. Her themes centred on
the moral responsibility of the individual in their personal and social
relations. The fictional genres she used ranged from romantic comedy
(Night and Silence, Who Is Here) and high comedy (The Unspeakable
Skipton) to tragedy (The Holiday Friend) and the psychological study of
cruelty (An Error of Judgement). Her last novel, A Bonfire, was
published in the year of her death, 1981. She was a critic as well as a
novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy Compton-Burnett; Six
Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her reputation as a leading
Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play, Corinth House (1954), a work
of social criticism arising out of the Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967),
and a book of essays, Important to Me (1974). She received honorary
degrees from six universities and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature. She was awarded the C. B.E. in 1975. Pamela Hansford
Johnson, who had two children by her first marriage with journalist
Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow. Their son Philip was born
in 1952.
