PREFACE BY FRANCES PARTRIDGE
192pp
ISBN 9781903155271

'A very cute, clever, indeed rather remarkable acidulated story... I think it is astonishingly good - complete and sharp and individual.' (Virginia Woolf)

This slim, sardonic and beautifully written novella by a niece of Lytton Strachey's was first published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press in 1932. In it, Dolly is getting ready to marry the Hon. Owen Bigham. Waylaid by the sulking admirer who lost his chance with her, an astonishingly oblivious mother, and her own sinking dread, the bride-to-be struggles to reach the altar with the help of a bottle of rum. The overall effect of the book is very funny in a Forsterian manner, with Dolly Thatcham being out of the same stable as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View and both the mothers, Mrs Thatcham and Mrs Honeychurch, sharing many appalling similarities. According to the New York Times on its initial appearance, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding 'shows evidence of quite unusual humour, observation and insight'. In 2012 it was made into a film starring Felicity Jones. 

Also available as a  and a  read by Miriam Margolyes.

Endpaper

The endpapers are a 1932 design for a printed dress fabric by Madeleine Lawrence.

Picture Caption

Julia Strachey by Ray Strachey, painted c.1925-35 at the time she was writing Cheerful Weather for the Wedding © NPG