She announced herself, rather self-consciously, as Mrs. Henry Smith, and he replied that Mrs. Cornwallis was expecting her. To Caroline, following him through a wide shabby hall, the whole episode was beginning to feel like a nightmare. She was intensely conscious of herself-of her dress, her voice, the way she placed her feet. She felt like a cook-general going to be interviewed.
"Mrs. Henry Smith," said the butler contemptuously.
In Four Gardens, the most emotional and nostalgic of Margery Sharp's brilliant novels, we meet the lovable Caroline Smith (née Chase) and glimpse the stages of her life through the gardens in which she digs. There's the lavish abandoned one in which she has no right to dig; the tiny one in which she has no time to dig; the extravagant one, complete with stubborn gardener, in which she's not allowed to dig; and one final garden, hers and hers alone, in which she finds quiet, wise contentment. As we follow Caroline through the vicissitudes of life, we meet her adoring husband Henry, her shockingly modern children Leon and Lily, and friends and neighbours from the self-righteous Ellen Taylor to the posh but hilariously down-to-earth Lady Tregarthan.
First published in 1935 and out of print for more than half a century, Four Gardens has long been a favorite of Margery Sharp fans and is one of six early Sharp novels now available from Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press.
'The Jane Austen touch, springing from a detached, quiet power of observation, a delicious, satirical way of relishing affectation, and a respect for sensible, genuine people.' New York Times
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ISBN-13
978-1-913527-66-2 (9781913527662)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Margery Sharp was born Clara Margery Melita Sharp in 1905 in Wiltshire. She spent some of her childhood in Malta, and on the family's return to England became a pupil at Streatham Hill High School.
She later studied at Bedford College, London, where she claimed her time was devoted 'almost entirely to journalism and campus activities.'
Still living in London, she began her writing career at the age of twenty-one, becoming a contributor of fiction and non-fiction to many of the most notable periodicals of the time in both Britain and America.
In 1938 she married Major Geoffrey Castle, an aeronautical engineer. On the outbreak of World War II, she served as a busy Army Education Lecturer, but continued her own writing both during and long after the conflict. Many of her stories for adults became the basis for Hollywood movie screenplays, in addition to the 'Miss Bianca' children's series, animated by Disney as The Rescuers in 1977.
Margery Sharp ultimately wrote 22 novels for adults (not 26, as is sometimes reported), as well as numerous stories and novellas (many of them published only in periodicals) and various works for children. She died in Suffolk in 1991, one year after her husband.
