Product Description

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 humor, English satire, 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 socialish 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #728992 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

From Booklist
Byatt, one of the most distinguished contemporary British fiction writers, lends a definite knowledge of the field to her gathering of outstanding short stories from her native land, all written at some point between the mid-nineteenth century and the present. She includes necessary masters--Rudyard Kipling, Saki, D. H. Lawrence, and V. S. Pritchett, to name a few. But, bless her good taste and reading experience, she draws into the fold the work of several extremely talented writers of which few readers on this side of the Atlantic will have heard. Falling into this category are such writers as Malachi Whitaker, H. E. Bates, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Charlotte Mew. The difference between a Charles Dickens story and one by the very contemporary Ian McEwan is no difference at all in terms of talent with the form. Fans of the short story will be delighted by what they discover here. Brad Hooper

From Kirkus Reviews
A solid collection of 37 stories, presumably intended to accompany an earlier volume edited by the late V.S. Pritchett. Byatt has cast her net widely and well, and included such overlooked gems as Graham Greene's ``The Destructors,'' Charlotte Mew's ``A White Night,'' and H.E. Bates's amazingly rich ``The Waterfall.'' Byatt's long Introductionwhich might well stand as a capsule history of its subjectsensibly emphasizes ``the evocation of the concrete'' as a common feature of English (as opposed to other British Isles' or Commonwealth) short fiction, while offering superb concise assessments of classic writers like Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, and Wells. If some of her omissions (especially de la Mare, Lessing, and Angus Wilson) are hard to defend, one is grateful for her unearthing of neglected writers like Arthur Morrison, Malachi Whitaker, and (the other) Elizabeth Taylor. All in all, one of Oxford's best, and another feather in Byatt's richly decorated cap. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
this is work of great interest, tact and deliberation./D.J. Taylor/ ??The Independent??

This is essentially one person's choice: quirky and idiosyncratic, very English in its old-fashioned literary values./ This is an enjoyable collection/ Eva Figes/ Highbury and Islington Express/ 22/05/98

Customer Reviews

Good collection
A good collection for readers interested in England and also well written stories. High quality tales.