Synopses & Reviews
"The subjects of these stories range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical," writes acclaimed novelist A.S. Byatt in her introduction to this remarkable collection. Indeed, if the eccentricities of the English imagination can be contained in a single volume, an anthology of short stories might be the best book for the task.
From Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy through Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf, right up to Graham Greene, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Ian McEwan, and many others, The Oxford Book of English Short Stories exhibits the capacious and often capricious nature of the English literary sensibility. "There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour, English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy," notes A.S. Byatt in surveying the stories she has selected. "There are characteristic mixed modes which seem to go back further than Austen and Defoe to Chaucer and Shakespeare." Byatt shows us the links between stories, the literary currents that both connect and distinguish writers as diverse as Mary Mann, V.S. Pritchett, P.G. Wodehouse, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Alan Sillitoe. And although the thirty-seven stories gathered here range from social realism to surreal fantasy, from rural poverty to war-blitzed London, from tales of the supernatural to precise delineations of the mundane, all are unified by Byatt's demanding criteria that the works be both "startling and satisfying."
For short story lovers and anyone unable to resist the enchantments of the English imagination, The Oxford Book of Short Stories offers a wide array of unforgettable pleasures.
Review
"Byatt has cast her net widely and well.... Her long introduction--which might well stand as a capsule history of the subject--sensibly emphasizes 'the evocation of the concrete' as a common feature of English short fiction, while offering superb concise assessments of classic writers like Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, and Wells.... One of Oxford's best, and another feather in Byatt's richly decorated cap."--
Kirkus ReviewsAbout the Author
A.S. Byatt is a prize-winning novelist, essayist, reviewer, and broadcaster. Her books include
Possession, The Matisse Stories, and
Angels and Insects. Table of Contents
Introduction, A. S. Byatt
The Sacristan of St Botolph, William Gilbert
The Haunted House, Charles Dickens
Relics of General Chasse, A Tale of Antwerp, Anthony Trollope
A Mere Interlude, Thomas Hardy
Little Brother, Mary Mann
Two Doctors, M. R. James
Behind the Shade, Arthur Morrison
Wireless, Rudyard Kipling
Under the Knife, H. G. Wells
A White Night, Charlotte Mew
The Toys of Peace, Saki
The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown, G. K. Chesterton
Some Talk of Alexander, A. E. Coppard
The Reverent Wooing of Archibald, P. G. Wodehouse
Solid Objects, Virginia Woolf
The Man who Loved Islands, D. H. Lawrence
A Tragedy in Green, Ronald Firbank
A Widow's Quilt, Sylvia Townsend Warner
Nuns at Luncheon, Aldous Huxley
Landlord of the Crystal Fountain, Malachi Whitaker
On the Edge of the Cliff, V. S. Pritchett
A Dream of Winter, Rosamund Lehmann
An Englishman's Home, Evelyn Waugh
The Destructors, Graham Greene
The Waterfall, H. E. Bates
The Troll, T. H. White
The Blush, Elizabeth Taylor
At Hiruharama, Penelope Fitzgerald
My Flannel Knickers, Leonora Carrington
Enoch's Two Letters, Alan Sillitoe
Dream Cargoes, J. G. Ballard
Telephone, John Fuller
My Story, John Fuller
The Kiss, Angela Carter
The Beauty of the Dawn Shift, Rose Tremain
Solid Geometry, Ian McEwan
Dead Languages, Philip Hensher