Title: Time to be in earnest : a fragment of autobiography /
Authors: James, P. D.
Publisher: Knopf,
Year: 2000
Subjects: James, P. D. Diaries.; Novelists, English Diaries; Detective and mystery stories Authorship
Abstract: In 1997, P. D. James, the 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.
Contents: Prologue ix -- Diary 1997August -- December 1 (144) -- Diary 1998 January -- August 145 (98) -- Appendix, Emma Considered as a Detective Story 243 (18) -- Index 261.