The Voluble Topsy de AP Herbert

Cet ouvrage est réédité le 11 juillet chez la très chouette maison d'édition anglaise Handheld Press.
Je l'ai repéré depuis un moment et suis impatiente de le découvrir !

Citation :

Topsy was the Bridget Jones of the 1920s, as if she’d been written by Nancy Mitford.

The Voluble Topsy collects A P Herbert’s The Trials of Topsy (1928), Topsy MP (1929) and Topsy Turvy (1947) in one volume for the pleasure and admiration of a new generation. For lovers of Nancy Mitford and the Provincial Lady Topsy will be a fresh delight.

‘Well Trix dear, what do you think, I’ve become a professional girl, well really, my dear, Mum’s got so tiresome about this boring marriage business and even Dad’s beginning to wear a martyrish look, and really I believe if I’m not blighted in matrimony in another fortnight they’ll lock the front door on me one night, and anyway as Mr Haddock said in these days economic thingummy is the sole criterion or something for a girl of spirit, don’t you agree, so I made up my mind to be Nature’s economic girl and earn some degrading lucre somehow, well, I thought it wouldn’t be too prohibitive because as Mr Haddock said England may be going to the dogs and democracy and everything but thank Heaven we’re all snobs still and if Lady Topsy Trout can’t find a niche in the façade of industry who can darling?’

It is the late 1920s. Topsy is a girl about town, a society deb, a dashing flapper. She writes breathless, exuberant letters to her best friend Trix about her life, her parties, her intrigues, and the men in her life. She deploys her native acumen and remarkable talent for kindness as well as being a doughty fighter for what she thinks is right (she hides a fox from the Hunt in her car). Then Topsy is unexpectedly drawn into politics, and to her amazement, she is elected as a member of Parliament.

Topsy’s extensive social life, her adventures in and out of the House of Commons (and her audacious attempts to legislate for the Enjoyment of the People), and her wartime activity as the mother of twins were recorded faithfully by the great comic writer A P Herbert as a series of satires in Punch.