She is famous for her love affairs but currently has an imponderable attraction to Arthur Grampian, her older, married boss, the head of an unspecified academic foundation.

Jane would like to see Prudence married, and thinks she has found a suitable candidate in Fabian Driver, a handsome, fortyish widower who lives in the village and is known to have been habitually unfaithful to his late wife.

There is, however, competition for Fabian: his next-door neighbours are the domineering Miss Doggett and her paid companion Jessie Morrow, who has long loved him and seeks escape from her lowly situation.

At the end of the book Arthur Grampian finally asks her to have dinner with him; she turns him down as she is going out with Geoffrey, but life seems full of promise again.

[3] The novelist Jilly Cooper regards Jane and Prudence as Pym's finest work - "full of wit, plotting, characterization and miraculous observation".

The character of Miss Morrow is distinctly different in Jane and Prudence, as is that of Barbara Bird, also re-used from Crampton Hodnet.

[13] The character of William Caldicote, from Pym's previous novel Excellent Women, appears very briefly late in this volume.