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"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 Reviews
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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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'.
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Who's your favourite book writer, granddad?" That's the question my 8yr old granddaughter asked me when she'd hinted that she was going to get me a book for my birthday. I'm really glad that my reply was somewhat `vague' in that I remember telling her that I liked so many authors, classics and modern, and that I would ideally like to read `something from everybody'. It seems my granddaughter took me literally and presented the Oxford Book of Short Stories to me on my birthday - and what a treat it's turned out to be. Wonderful, 37 stories from the 19th & 20th centuries' authors ranging from Dickens, Woolf, Woodhouse, Wells, Lawrence, Kipling, Greene and many others, some of which I'm reading for the first time.
The stories themselves are a wonderful selection, Byatt should be commended on her choice; Byatt tells us that her "... only criterion was that [the] stories ... should be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement aesthetic narrative". I think she's managed this.
As a rule I read a few stories each night before going to bed which resulted in about 2 weeks of very, very enjoyable reading - I fully recommend this anthology to anyone and everyone, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone getting the same level of enjoyment for the price paid for the book.
The stories themselves are a wonderful selection, Byatt should be commended on her choice; Byatt tells us that her "... only criterion was that [the] stories ... should be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement aesthetic narrative". I think she's managed this.
As a rule I read a few stories each night before going to bed which resulted in about 2 weeks of very, very enjoyable reading - I fully recommend this anthology to anyone and everyone, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone getting the same level of enjoyment for the price paid for the book.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A wonderful collection from lots of varying authors, and a nice size aswell. My mum was very pleased with it!
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