POWELL, Anthony

[239] pp.

Little, Brown and Company

1957

8 1/4″ x 5 7/8″

Jacket design by Barbara Corrigan

At Lady Molly’s is the fourth volume in Anthony Powell’s twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1957, At Lady Molly’s is set in England of the mid-1930s and is essentially a comedy of manners, but in the background, the rise of Hitler and of worldwide Fascism are not ignored. The driving theme of At Lady Molly’s is married life; marriages as practised or mooted among the narrator’s (Nick Jenkins) acquaintances in bohemian society and the landed classes are pondered. Meanwhile, the career moves of various characters are advanced, checked or put on hold.

The portrait of the aristocratic Tolland family is sourced in part from Powell’s own in-laws, the Pakenhams.