The Oxford Book of English Short Stories

Edited by A. S. Byatt

Oxford Books of Prose & Verse

Edited by prize-winning novelist, essayist, broadcaster, and reviewer A. S. Byatt
The 37 short stories featured range from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan
Encompasses comedy and tragedy, farce and delicacy, elegance and the grotesque, ranging from social realism to the supernatural, surreal fantasy to science fiction

Reissue

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories

Edited by A. S. Byatt

Description

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories , edited by A. S. Byatt, herself the author of several collections of short stories, is the first anthology to specifically take the English short story as its theme. The 37 stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan, though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing.

There are all sorts of threads of connection and contrast running through these stories. Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical. There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour, English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy. There are examples of social realism, from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories and tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy and science fiction. There are stories of sensibility, precisely delineated, from Hardy's reluctant bride to the shocked heroine of Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush, from H. E. Bates's brilliant fusion of class, sex, death, and landscape, to D. H. Lawrence's exploration of a consciousness slowly detaching itself from its world. There are exuberant stories by Saki and Waugh, Wodehouse and Firbank, with a particularly English range from high irony to pure orchestrated farce.

The very range and scope of the collection celebrates the eccentric differences and excellences of English short stories. Some of A. S. Byatt's choices clearly take their place in the grand tradition of story-telling, while others are more unusual. Many break all the rules of unity of tone and narrative, appearing to be one kind of story before unexpectedly turning into another. They pack together comedy and tragedy, farce and delicacy, elegance and the grotesque, with language as various as the subject matter. As A. S. Byatt explains: 'My only criterion was that those stories I selected should be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement, aesthetic or narrative'.

Reissue

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories

Edited by A. S. Byatt

Oxford Books of Prose & Verse

Introduction, A. S. Byatt
The Sacristan of St Botolph, William Gilbert
The Haunted House, Charles Dickens
Relics of General Chassé, 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

Reissue

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories

Edited by A. S. Byatt

Oxford Books of Prose & Verse

Author Information

Edited by A. S. Byatt

Contributors:

A. S. Byatt
William Gilbert
Charles Dickens
Anthony Trollope
Thomas Hardy
Mary Mann
M. R. James
Arthur Morrison
Rudyard Kipling
H. G. Wells
Charlotte Mew
Saki
G. K. Chesterton
A. E. Coppard
P. G. Wodehouse
Virginia Woolf
D. H. Lawrence
Ronald Firbank
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Aldous Huxley
Malachi Whitaker
V. S. Pritchett
Rosamund Lehmann
Evelyn Waugh
Graham Greene
H. E. Bates
T. H. White
Elizabeth Taylor
Penelope Fitzgerald
Leonora Carrington
Alan Sillitoe
J. G. Ballard
John Fuller
John Fuller
Angela Carter
Rose Tremain
Ian McEwan
Philip Hensher