The Oxford Book of English Short Stories

by Byatt, A. S.

• ISBN13: 9780192881113
• ISBN10: 0192881116
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

"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.

Author Biography

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	xv
A.S. Byatt
The Sacristan of St Botolph	1	(17)
William Gilbert
The Haunted House	18	(26)
Charles Dickens
Relics of General Chasse: A Tale of Antwerp	44	(19)
Anthony Trollope
A Mere Interlude	63	(30)
Thomas Hardy
Little Brother	93	(4)
Mary Mann
Two Doctors	97	(8)
M. R. James
Behind the Shade	105	(5)
Arthur Morrison
`Wireless'	110	(17)
Rudyard Kipling
Under the Knife	127	(12)
H. G. Wells
A White Night	139	(16)
Charlotte Mew
The Toys of Peace	155	(5)
Saki
The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown	160	(20)
G. K. Chesterton
Some Talk of Alexander	180	(8)
A. E. Coppard
The Reverent Wooing of Archibald	188	(16)
P. G. Wodehouse
Solid Objects	204	(6)
Virginia Woolf
The Man who Loved Islands	210	(23)
D. H. Lawrence
A Tragedy in Green	233	(10)
Ronald Firbank
A Widow's Quilt	243	(7)
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Nuns at Luncheon	250	(14)
Aldous Huxley
Landlord of the Crystal Fountain	264	(6)
Malachi Whitaker
On the Edge of the Cliff	270	(16)
V. S. Pritchett
A Dream of Winter	286	(9)
Rosamond Lehmann
An Englishman's Home	295	(16)
Evelyn Waugh
The Destructors	311	(14)
Graham Greene
The Waterfall	325	(20)
H.E. Bates
The Troll	345	(10)
T. H. White
The Blush	355	(7)
Elizabeth Taylor
At Hiruharama	362	(7)
Penelope Fitzgerald
My Flannel Knickers	369	(3)
Leonora Carrington
Enoch's Two Letters	372	(9)
Alan Sillitoe
Dream Cargoes	381	(15)
J. G. Ballard
Telephone	396	(2)
John Fuller
My Story	398	(2)
John Fuller
The Kiss	400	(3)
Angela Carter
The Beauty of the Dawn Shift	403	(17)
Rose Tremain
Solid Geometry	420	(15)
Ian Mcewan
Dead Languages	435
Philip Hensher