Time to be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography

Front Cover
Knopf, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 269 pages
In 1997, P. D. James, the much loved and internationally acclaimed author of mysteries, turned seventy-seven. Taking to heart Dr. Johnson's advice that at seventy-seven it is "time to be in earnest," she decided to undertake a book unlike any she had written before: a personal memoir in the form of a diary. This enchanting and highly original volume is the result. Structured as the diary of a single year, it roams back and forth through time, illuminating James's extraordinary, sometimes painful and sometimes joyful life.
Here, interwoven with reflections on her writing career and the craft of crime novels, are vivid accounts of episodes in her own past -- of school days in 1920s and 1930s Cambridge . . . of the war and the tragedy of her husband's madness . . . of her determined struggle to support a family alone. She tells about the birth of her second daughter in the midst of a German buzz-bomb attack; about becoming a civil servant (and laying the groundwork for her writing career by working in the criminal justice system); about her years of public service on such bodies as the Arts Council and the BBC's Board of Governors, culminating in entry to the House of Lords. Along the way, with warmth and authority, she offers views on everything from author tours to the problems of television adaptations, from book reviewing to her obsession with Jane Austen.
Written with exceptional grace, this "fragment of autobiography" has already been received with enthusiasm by British reviewers and readers. The thousands of Americans who have enjoyed P. D. James's novels will be equally charmed. Diary or memoir or both, Time to Be in Earnest is a delight.

From inside the book

Contents

Appendix
228
Emma Considered as a Detective Story
243
Index
261
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2000)

P. D. James, pseudonym of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, spent thirty years in British Civil Service. She is best known for her two mystery series. The protagonist of one series, Adam Dalgleish, works for Scotland Yard and is also a poet. Three titles in this series have received the Silver Dagger award--Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and A Taste for Death. Other titles in this series include Devices and Desires and Original Sin. James's other series feature Cordelia Gray, a private investigator in London; titles in this series include An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin. P.D. James has received the prestigious Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement.

Bibliographic information