We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.

A blue plaque marking the cottage as an historic site was placed in 2006. This inspired her use of anthropologists as characters in her novels. A tragic undercurrent runs through some of the later novels especially Quartet in Autumn and The Sweet Dove Died.

Her novel Quartet in Autumn (1977) was nominated for the Booker Prize that year and Barbara Pym was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In the 1950s Barbara Pym wrote a series of social comedies of which the best known are Excellent Women (1952) and A Glass of Blessings (1958). Barbara Mary Crampton Pym (2 June 1913 – 11 January 1980) was an English novelist.