A Fearful Joy
Joyce Cary

A Fearful Joy

Tabitha Baskett is seduced by an engaging scoundrel named Bonser who deserts her when she is pregnant. She is taken under the wing of a businessman who is also a patron of the arts; and after his death, by a millionaire. Finally she returns to Bonser who marries her. In charting the life of Tabitha, Cary has written one of the most enchantingly comic and life-enhancing stories of modern fiction and a vivid history of the first half of the twentieth century.

Book Details:

  • Author: Joyce Cary
  • Published Year: 1949
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: Cardinal
    • UK: Faber
Joyce Cary

Joyce Cary

Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family and educated at Clifton. He studied art, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris , before going up to Trinity College, Oxford, in 1909 to read law. On coming down he served as a Red Cross orderly in the Balkan War of 1912-13,the inspiration for Memoir of the Bobotes , before joining the Nigerian Political Service. He served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War, was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons, and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. His time in Africa provided the inspiration for h...
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Book Reviews

  • "It is a very good novel. I think it may be a great novel…sensitivity to human relationships and a sense of form which we have missed since EM Forster grew silent."
    News Chronicle
  • "Read this book. It is a fine example of the work of one of the best contemporary novelists."
    CP Snow
  • "A bizarre love story…full of his best fun."
    Daily Telegraph