Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

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Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
First edition
AuthorBarbara Comyns
CountryUnited Kingdom
GenreFiction
PublisherEyre & Spottiswoode
Publication date
1950
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths is a novel by the English writer Barbara Comyns, first published in 1950.[1]

The story[edit]

The book is based on Comyns's marriage to John Pemberton, which ended in 1935. In the bohemian London of the 1930s, Sophia Fairclough and her husband Charles are painters, twenty-one and newly married, and poor. Sophia has two babies and a pet newt, becomes a life model to support her family and starts an affair with an ageing art critic called Peregrine.[2][3] The book is substantially autobiographical, with only a small number of purely imaginary scenes.[4]

Publication[edit]

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths was published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1950. It was reissued by Virago in 1983, and has been reprinted several times since then.[5]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Barbara Comyns (1950). Our Spoons came from Woolworths. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode.
  2. ^ Lucy Scholes (28 July 2013). Sisters By a River; Our Spoons Came from Woolworths; The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns – review. The Guardian. Accessed March 2015.
  3. ^ Comyns, Barbara, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (Virago)
  4. ^ Celia Brayfield (2004). Carr, Barbara Irene Veronica Comyns (1907–1992). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50950(subscription required)
  5. ^ Comyns, Barbara (2004). Our spoons came from Woolworths (Reprinted with a new introduction by Ursula Holden ed.). London: Virago. ISBN 0860683532.