The Improvised Life of Polycarp Jarvis

Name: The Improvised Life of Polycarp Jarvis
Rating: 4.05 (312 reviews)

by Victor Canning Book 4 in the Classic Canning series.

First published 1935

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4.0(312)

On his twenty-first birthday, Bristol clerk John Polycarp Jarvis celebrates too freely with his employer’s daughter and loses his secure position. Rather than seek another conventional office job, he begins an erratic progress through 1930s Britain. He drives a bus, helps establish a flying circus, becomes involved with a dogs’ home and repeatedly turns accident, dismissal or embarrassment into a new opportunity.

Polycarp’s ascent eventually carries him into business, popular journalism and the theatre, though success tests the charm and optimism that made it possible. First published as Polycarp’s Progress in 1935, the novel uses comic exaggeration to explore interwar ideas of self-improvement and social mobility. Civil aviation, expanding mass media and speculative enterprise form the backdrop to a coming-of-age story about ambition without a settled plan.