or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
16 used & new from £9.97

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (Oxford Books of Prose)
 
 

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (Oxford Books of Prose) (Paperback)

by A. S. Byatt (Editor)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
Price: £12.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 weeks.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

8 new from £12.66 8 used from £9.97

Frequently Bought Together

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (Oxford Books of Prose) + The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) + The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
Price For All Three: £22.98

Some of these items ship sooner than the others. Show details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)

by James Daley
£2.32
The New Poetry

The New Poetry

by Michael Hulse
4.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £7.49
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

by Malcolm Bradbury
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £7.67
Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry

Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry

by W.N. Herbert
4.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £6.83
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Oxford World's Classics)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Oxford World's Classics)

by James Joyce
£4.18
Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 472 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (28 Nov 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 019280376X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192803764
  • Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 278,203 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #26 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Byatt, A.S.
    #51 in  Books > Fiction > Short Stories > World > Welsh
    #61 in  Books > Fiction > Short Stories > World > Scottish
  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Product 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'.


About the Author

A. S. Byatt is a novelist, essayist, broadcaster, and reviewer, and has taught at University College London. She won the Booker Prize for her novel Possession (1990), and her other books include Angels and Insects (1992), and Babel Tower (1996).

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
short stories
english fiction
collected english stories
byatt

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (Oxford Books of Prose)
79% buy the item featured on this page:
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (Oxford Books of Prose) 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£12.99
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
7% buy
The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£7.67
The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
6% buy
The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
£2.32
Fifty Great Short Stories
5% buy
Fifty Great Short Stories 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
£4.26

 

Customer Reviews

1 Review
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The most brilliant collection of short stories ever, 29 April 2000
By A Customer
This book is amongst the most entertaining books I have ever read. It contains a wide range of subjects and styles ranging from P. G. Wodehouse's "The Reverent Wooing Of Archibald" to "A Widow's Quilt" by Sylvia Townsend Warner. The book alows the reader to choose his or her story according to mood or prefernence and thus makes for a very good thing. It is the wide range of storie and authors in the book that really make it so great. A. S. Byatt has selected the choicest morcels of litterary brilliance and added them all into this great collection. Thoughly worth a read or two.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Look for similar items by subject


Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.