Pastors and Masters (Heathen Edition)
Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) was a reclusive novelist who in the 1950s became known in literary circles as "the English Secret," and was considered austere and unassuming by all who had the rare fortune to meet her. Publicly, she was so modest that any praise of her books, made in her presence, pained her. But hidden under simple appearances lay a literary iconoclast with a biting, acerbic wit who developed a wholly distinct and highly individualistic dialogue-heavy style that would span 19 novels. A style first introduced here, in her second novel, Pastors and Masters. A short work that is largely a satiric depiction of Victorian institutions, and a character study of masculine authority and female subservience within the setting of a boys preparatory school after World War I. The crux of the loose narrative being one's success as defined by way of novel authorship. So unique is the style borne here that it has been described as "a work of genius. It is like nothing else in the world."
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"Miss Compton-Burnett is totally unlike any other novelist. Wit and melodrama have never been so combined before, and the combination is a brilliant success . . . She is a unique figure in modern English literature." -Philip Toynbee
"There is nobody in all this writing world even remotely like her." -Norman Shrapnel, The Guardian
"It is in Pastors and Masters that we first come on a unique style that keeps all descriptions, except of characters' physical appearances, to a minimum, and makes dialogue always the mainspring of the narrative." -Francis King, The Spectator
"A remarkable and unusual novelist, who has, in her own well-tilled field, no rival and no parallel." -Times Literary Supplement
"As for Pastors and Masters, it is astonishing, alarming. It is like nothing else in the world. It is a work of genius . . . The canvas is crowded; the conversation is close-packed; the unconscious self-revelation of the characters extraordinary. No quotation could do this book justice; the flavour is in the whole; and it is worth discovering there." -New Statesman
". . . she fills her matchless dialogue with utterly unpredictable remarks, she flits from sense to nonsense, she swings you around and around until, helpless and happy, you hope she'll never let go." -W. G. Rogers
"The single most powerful force at work in the English novel in the generation following James Joyce and Virginia Woolf." -Raymond Mortimer
"Ivy Compton-Burnett is one of the most original, artful and elegant writers of our century. To read her for the first time is a singular experience." -Hilary Mantel
