Eliza

Barry Pain’s small domestic comedy is narrated not by Eliza but by her husband, a pompous, unnamed suburban clerk who mistakes his petty self-importance for dignity. He patronises the servants, frets over imagined social slights, and strains to climb a social ladder that stays out of reach, all while the quietly capable Eliza smooths over the wreckage he leaves behind. First published in 1900, the book is a set of linked comic sketches in which the joke is always on the narrator, who never once notices it. Much of the humour comes from his contradictions, from snubbing the neighbours he privately envies to lending money he cannot spare in the hope of impressing his betters. Readers who enjoy The Diary of a Nobody will recognise the same affectionate mockery of English suburban vanity, drawn here with a lighter, sharper touch.