New York Times
Mr. Cary...has actuality like Defoe, humor and energy like Dickens, hand-made prose and improvisation like both these great writers.


Book Description
Herself Surprised, the first volume of Joyc e Cary's remarkable First Trilogy, introduces Sara Monday, a woman at once dissolute and devout, passionate and sly. With no regrets, Sara reviews her changing fortunes , remembering the drudgery of domestic servitude, the pleasures of playing the great lady in a small provincial town, and the splendors and miseries of life as the mode l, muse, and mistress of the painter Gulley Jimson. Each volume of Cary's trilogy, which continues in To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth, brings a single character to intense and memorable life and can be read entirely on its own. But when r ead together the three books, with their three strikingly different narrators, affor d new and startling perspectives on each other. In the end, the trilogy offers a swe eping tragicomic vision, at once sympathetic and satirical, of humanity in all its f allenness and freedom. It is the masterwork of a writer of dazzling insight and verb al resource, and one of the outstanding landmarks of twentieth-century fiction.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
First novel of an acclaimed trilogy by Joyce Cary, first published in 1941. Followed by To Be a Pilgrim (1942) and The Horse's Mouth (1944), Herself Surprised is narrated by its protagonist, Sara Monday. A passionate woman, Sara is emotionally involved with three men: her husband, Matthew, who dies; Tom Wilcher, the archtraditionalist protagonist of To Be a Pilgrim, who is in love with her; and the artist Gulley Jimson (protagonist of The Horse's Mouth).


About the Author
Joyce Cary (1888-1957) was born in Ireland and studied to be a painter before serving in the British military and civil service in West Africa. In 1920 he returned to England and devoted himself to writing.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Herself Surprised, the first volume of Joyce Cary's remarkable First Trilogy, introduces Sara Monday, a woman at once dissolute and devout, passionate and sly. With no regrets, Sara reviews her changing fortunes, remembering the drudgery of domestic servitude, the pleasures of playing the great lady in a small provincial town, and the splendors and miseries of life as the model, muse, and mistress of the painter Gulley Jimson.

Each volume of Cary's trilogy, which continues in To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth, brings a single character to intense and memorable life and can be read entirely on its own. But when read together the three books, with their three strikingly different narrators, afford new and startling perspectives on each other. In the end, the trilogy offers a sweeping tragicomic vision, at once sympathetic and satirical, of humanity in all its fallenness and freedom. It is the masterwork of a writer of dazzling insight and verbal resource, and one of the outstanding landmarks of twentieth-century fiction.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Mr. Cary...has actuality like Defoe, humor and energy like Dickens, hand-made prose and improvisation like both these great writers.

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