Young bride-to-be Dolly must overcome several obstacles in this hilarious, sardonic novella by Julia Strachey set in 1930s England. Following an excellent film adaptation in 2012, this audio edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is read by internationally acclaimed actress Miriam Margoyles.
Dolly is twenty-three and about to marry the Honourable Owen Bigham. Her wedding day is filled with hasty and chaotic preparations for the entire household. Matters are complicated further by Dolly swigging from a bottle of Jamaica rum, which she later transfers into the folds of her white dress. Will she arrive at her own wedding on time, or will the fumbling advances of Joseph, the man she really loves, get in the way?
Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection, a series of forgotten classics including neglected fiction and non-fiction by women writers. This edition was first published in 1932 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press. It includes a preface by the late author Frances Partridge, a longtime friend of Strachey's who wrote her biography, Julia, A Portrait of Julia Strachey (1983).
'A very cute, clever, indeed rather remarkable acidulated story . . . I think it is astonishingly good – complete and sharp and individual' – Virginia Woolf Julia Strachey was born in India in 1901. She was the niece of author and critic Lytton Strachey. She married sculptor Stephen Tomlin in 1927; the couple separated in 1934. As well as writing short stories for magazines, Julia was a publisher's reader, a photographer and a model. In 1932 the Hogarth Press released Cheerful Weather for the Wedding. Julia met art critic Lawrence Gowing in 1939. The couple married and were together for three decades. Her 1951 novel The Man on the Pier was republished by Penguin in 1978 as An Integrated Man. Julia Strachey died in 1979. An entertaining novella read by Miriam Margoyles.
