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Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography

p.d. james

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On the day she turned seventy-seven, internationally acclaimed mystery writer P. D. James embarked on an endeavor unlike any other in her distinguished she decided to write a personal memoir in the form of a diary. Over the course of a year she set down not only the events and impressions of her extraordinarily active life, but also the memories, joys, discoveries, and crises of a lifetime. This enchantingly original volume is the result.

Time to Be in Earnest offers an intimate portrait of one of most accomplished women of our time. Here are vivid, revealing accounts of her school days in Cambridge in the 1920s and '30s, her happy marriage and the tragedy of her husband's mental illness, and the thrill of publishing her first novel, Cover Her Face, in 1962. As she recounts the decades of her exceptional life, James holds forth with wit and candor on such diverse subjects as the evolution of the detective novel, her deep love of the English countryside, her views of author tours and television adaptations, and her life-long obsession with Jane Austen. Wise and frank, engaging and graceful, this "fragment of autobiography" will delight and surprise P. D. James's admirers the world over.

269 pages, Paperback

First published November 1,1999
Places
cambridge england, 

This edition

Format
269 pages, Paperback
Published
February 27, 2001 by Random House Publishing Group
ISBN
9780345442123
ASIN
0345442121
Language
English

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About the author

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p.d. james

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P. D. James, byname of Phyllis Dorothy James White, Baroness James of Holland Park, (born August 3, 1920, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England—died November 27, 2014, Oxford), British mystery novelist best known for her fictional detective Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard.

The daughter of a middle-grade civil servant, James grew up in the university town of Cambridge. Her formal education, however, ended at age 16 because of lack of funds, and she was thereafter self-educated. In 1941 she married Ernest C.B. White, a medical student and future physician, who returned home from wartime service mentally deranged and spent much of the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals. To support her family (which included two children), she took work in hospital administration and, after her husband's death in 1964, became a civil servant in the criminal section of the Department of Home Affairs. Her first mystery novel, Cover Her Face (1962), introduced Dalgliesh and was followed by six more mysteries before she retired from government service in 1979 to devote full time to writing.

Dalgliesh, James's master detective who rises from chief inspector in the first novel to chief superintendent and then to commander, is a serious, introspective person, moralistic yet realistic. The novels in which he appears are peopled by fully rounded characters, who are civilized, genteel, and motivated. The public resonance created by James's singular characterization and deployment of classic mystery devices led to most of the novels featuring Dalgliesh being filmed for television. James, who earned the sobriquet “Queen of Crime,” penned 14 Dalgliesh novels, with the last, The Private Patient, appearing in 2008.

James also wrote An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), which centre on Cordelia Gray, a young private detective. The first of these novels was the basis for both a television movie and a short-lived series. James expanded beyond the mystery genre in The Children of Men (1992; film 2006), which explores a dystopian world in which the human race has become infertile. Her final work, Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)—a sequel to Pride and Prejudice (1813)—amplifies the class and relationship tensions between Jane Austen's characters by situating them in the midst of a murder investigation. James's nonfiction works include The Maul and the Pear Tree (1971), a telling of the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 written with historian T.A. Critchley, and the insightful Talking About Detective Fiction (2009). Her memoir, Time to Be in Earnest, was published in 2000. She was made OBE in 1983 and was named a life peer in 1991.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
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todoke
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I was given this for my birthday by my partner's parents. I went to hear P.D James talk just over 10 years ago and found her fascinating and measured.

Her memoir is just as fascinating. This is a diary she keeps for a year from her 77th birthday
(3rd August 1997). Alongside her fairly regular entries, she goes in to her background and shares plenty of interesting anecdotes from old crimes to politics and literature. Much of what she shares about that time brought me back to me childhood in the 1990s and I loved reading about her background being born between the two World Wars and how much she coped with in her family life.

An excellent memoir which is well written and has given me even more admiration for P.D James. I now need to read more of her novels!
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simalacrum
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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The book is gracefully and lucidly written, as one would expect. She is an opinionated person and I wish there wasn't quite so much about British politics, or so much name-dropping. Her energy in the chronicled year is impressive. One could wish that she had opened up more about her tragedies and regrets, including her very difficult marriage, but she is a reserved and very stiff-upper-lip person and what she presents in this fragment of memoir is carefully edited. The parts of the book I found most interesting were those in which she writes about books, poetry and what it's like to be on the best-seller reading circuit, and her memories of World War II. If you are a fan and close reader of her fiction (as I am) you won't be surprised by anything you learn about Ms. James. This is the opposite of a tell-all.
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Decunt
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Meh. She didn't need the money. She did a lot of name-dropping, and 'this is how wonderful my life as a successful author has made me and how popular I am' rather than reflections. She comes across to me as in insufferable snob, particularly about the fees for libraries. Now that she has money enough to buy any book she wants, she doesn't see it as a particular hardship for others to have to pay, although she does feel slightly badly about it. Bah.

I liked her better when she was catty about Agatha Christie. She at least showed some humor, which is sadly lacking here. Maybe its too soon to read quite so much of her personal writing. I just finished the book on writing detective fiction. Parts of this are identical to that. lol Don't throw out the good stuff. She must be bored to death having to say the same crap about writing over and over again. It seems that she never gets enough of speaking, though. It can't take any effort after all the times she Dows it in a month, let alone a year, to say nothing of how many years.

She actually has become one of the characters in an Agatha Christie story that she so deplores.
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Jamesml9411
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This was disappointing. It is basically excerpts from a diary, which is less than riveting. It offers virtually no insights into the author's character, personality or life. It's almost as if she became tired of people hounding her to learn what she was like, and so turned out something interminably boring to get them off her back. Stick to her fiction, would be my advice.
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Ciu
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I've never read a P.D. James book prior to this one. Her year of autobiography was very moving, especially in the first major portion of this work, as she reflected upon her deeper truths. As the book continued, the last third was more a recounting of activities with less and less earnestness and inwardness.
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ankakung101
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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If you are a P.D. James fan, don't miss out on this lovely autobiography. Written in diary format over the year she turned 77, it is a brilliant look at not just the author, but the amazing person. As she would talk about a book she had written, I would glance at my shelf and there it was, begging to be re-read. And so I am- some, if not all. This woman's energy is incredible. How I would have loved to hear her in person. I have long loved her books, now I love the author.
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Archie008
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Although this record is for the paperback edition, I read this book on Kobo. An interesting read - one year in the life of P.D. James, her 78th, written in 1997-98. I am amazed at the pace of visiting and speaking engagements she maintained in her 78th year, as well as finishing one novel and writing the memoir, which she calls "a fragment of a biography." I like the idea of keep a diary/memoir in detail for just one year, rather than the commitment to an ongoing narrative. I am thinking of doing this for 2021.
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kingw0rm
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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P.D. James chronicles a breathtakingly busy life as one of Britain’s grand dames of literature. She weaves in reflections on her past, the art of the murder mystery and modern culture. In less artful hands, the account might turn discursive and jumbled. Not in hers.
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