 By April 1940, Pym had finished "Crampton Hodnet" and sent it to close friends for their comments .The outbreak of World War II distracted Pym from her budding literary career, as she served in both England and Naples during the War.She made some alterations to the text in the early 1950s, after her first novel "Some Tame Gazelle" had been published by Jonathan Cape, but ultimately decided the text was too dated to publish .