The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1

by Philip Hensher

  MAX BEERBOHM (1872–1956) was a wit, essayist, novelist and caricaturist and the most brilliant parodist in the English language. His parodies of Henry James have never been equalled, and astonished even their subject with their virtuosity. The son of a rich Lithuanian grain merchant, he met Wilde, Beardsley and William Rothenstein while he was still at Oxford. The elegant refinement of his prose style early led to him being dismissed from a job writing letters for a theatrical company, as it took him far too long. He married in 1910, moving to Rapallo in Italy, where he never, in the following forty-six years, learned to speak Italian.

  ARNOLD BENNETT (1867–1931) was born in what would later be called Stoke-on-Trent. After moving to London to work as a solicitor’s clerk, he found success as a journalist, and subsequently writing fiction. He never, in a very profitable career, gave up journalism. In 1903, he moved to Paris to be closer to the sources of French realism, such as Zola and Maupassant; the first major result of this endeavour, The Old Wives’ Tale, has always been regarded as a masterpiece. His other great novels are the Clayhanger trilogy, The Card and Riceyman Steps, which combine a specificity of detail with a verve all but unique in English fiction. As he was dying, of typhoid, in 1931, he was one of the last to receive the honour of having the street outside his house muffled with a thick layer of straw. His novels have never stopped commanding the respect and love of practising novelists and ordinary readers.

  D. H. LAWRENCE (1885–1930) was born the son of a Nottinghamshire miner. He won scholarships to Nottingham High School, leaving at sixteen to become a clerk, then a teacher. His first successes as a writer came in 1908 with a short story for Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford). In 1912, he met Frieda Weekley, née von Richthofen, who left her husband for him; they eloped together to Germany. Sons and Lovers was published in 1913. During the Great War Lawrence and Frieda lived in poverty in Cornwall, where they were regarded as German spies, Lawrence working on Women in Love, unpublishable until 1920. After being required to leave Cornwall under the Defence of the Realm Act, Lawrence and Frieda took the first opportunity to leave England. They travelled to Italy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and New Mexico. Lawrence went on being harried by the British authorities, and his last novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was not published until 1960, after a celebrated obscenity trial.

  RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936) was born in Bombay. His family was immensely well connected: his uncle was Edward Burne-Jones and his cousin Stanley Baldwin. As a tiny child, he was boarded in Southsea with a couple given to abominable cruelty, and later, at a school of military inclination. At sixteen, he returned to India. Visits to Simla resulted in the stories collected as Plain Tales from the Hills. In 1889, he came back to England the long way, via America; his American wife Carrie drew him back in the 1890s. First success came with writing about India, poems, short stories, fiction for children and novels, written in America. After his return to England in 1896, Kipling became a controversial but passionately loved poet of Empire, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907. The death of his son in the Great War led to a detachment from the official version. He went on living an active public life, writing with the unforgettable energy that has sometimes been mischaracterized as vulgarity.

  STACY AUMONIER (1877–1928) was a writer of short stories immensely highly regarded in his lifetime. He was a London child of a family of artists, a gifted writer and a much admired stage performer. In his obituary, the Observer claimed that ‘no man had more friends’. Galsworthy described him as ‘one of the best short story writers of all time’ and thought that he would ‘outlive all the writers of his day’. The stories have a frequent structural ingenuity, occasionally verging on the very odd.

  VIOLA MEYNELL (1885–1956) was the daughter of a well-known publisher and niece of the great battle painter Lady Butler. Her parents were pillars of late-Victorian literary society. She married a Sussex farmer, and maintained friendships and correspondence with a number of important writers, not all of whom were well known at the time – she was an early supporter of D. H. Lawrence.

  A. E. COPPARD (1878–1957) was the child of deprived circumstances, leaving school at nine. He did not publish until the 1920s, when he was living in Oxford. He was well regarded by his contemporaries, and was one of the first authors to be seriously collected by connoisseurs of small presses – some of his later stories were written to be produced in small numbers in luxury editions for the benefit of collectors.

  E. M. DELAFIELD (EDMÉE ELIZABETH MONICA DASHWOOD) (1890–1943) was the daughter of a Count de la Pasture. At twenty-one, she entered a convent of an enclosed order in Belgium, only leaving when she learned that her sister was planning to join another enclosed order, meaning that they would never meet. During the war, she worked as a nurse, publishing her first novel in 1917. She was a professional and accomplished author during the 1920s and 1930s, attaining popular success with Diary of a Provincial Lady in 1930.

  DOROTHY EDWARDS (1903–34) had a short and tragic life. She came from a political family in Wales, the daughter of a socialist and vegetarian schoolmaster, and had an early ambition to become an opera singer. Her political activism and elegant writing brought her to the attention of Bloomsbury in the person of David Garnett, who first adopted her as a protégée and lodger, then asked her to make other arrangements when he tired of her. Without any income, and struggling with serious depression, she returned home to Wales, and committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. She published a novel, Winter Sonata, and a collection of short stories, Rhapsody. Both are remarkable.

  JOHN BUCHAN (1875–1940) was, in worldly terms, the most important of great British novelists after Disraeli. He was the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister. After university in Glasgow and Oxford, he became a diplomat’s secretary and was called to the Bar. With the outbreak of the Great War, Buchan took on official duties, including Director of Information in the Intelligence Corps. Some papers relating to his wartime activities are still classified. His famous The Thirty-Nine Steps and his masterpiece, Greenmantle, were published during this busy time. After the war, he continued his busy public life, in 1927 being elected MP for the Combined Scottish Universities. In 1935 he was made Baron Tweedsmuir, and shortly afterwards appointed Governor General of Canada. He was given a state funeral in his adoptive country.

  Acknowledgements

  ‘The Great Unimpressionable’, Stacy Aumonier.

  First published in Pictorial Review (November 1919) and then in Stacy Aumonier, The Golden Windmill and Other Stories (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921).

  ‘Enoch Soames’, Max Beerbohm.

  First published in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1916) and then in Max Beerbohm, Seven Men (London: William Heinemann, 1919). Reprinted by permission of Berlin Associates Ltd.

  ‘The Matador of the Five Towns’, Arnold Bennett.

  First published in The English Review (April 1909) and then in Arnold Bennett, The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories (London: Methuen and Co., 1912).

  ‘The King of Ypres’, John Buchan.

  First published in The Illustrated London News (December 1915) and then in John Buchan, The Watcher by the Threshold (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1918).

  ‘The Honour of Israel Gow’, G. K. Chesterton.

  First published (as ‘The Strange Justice’) in The Saturday Evening Post (25 March 1911) and then in G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown (London: Cassell & Company, 1911).

  ‘Mrs Badgery’, Wilkie Collins.

  First published in Household Words (26 September 1857) and then in Novels and Tales reprinted from Household Words, conducted by Charles Dickens, vol. 6 (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1857).

  ‘Amy Foster’, Joseph Conrad.

  First published in The Illustrated London News (14–28 December 1901) and then in Joseph Conrad, Typhoon and Other Stories (London: William Heinemann, 1903).

  ‘Olive and Camilla’, A. E. Coppard.

  First publi
shed in A. E. Coppard, The Field of Mustard (London: Jonathan Cape, 1926). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates. Copyright © A. E. Coppard, 1926.

  ‘A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal’, Daniel Defoe.

  First published as Anon., A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, The next Day after Her Death: to one Mrs. Bargrave At Canterbury. The 8th September, 1705 (London: Printed for B. Bragg, at the Black Raven in Pater-Noster-Row, 1706).

  ‘Holiday Group’, E. M. Delafield.

  First published in [Alec Waugh (ed.)], Georgian Stories 1926 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1926).

  ‘Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgings’, Charles Dickens.

  First published in All the Year Round, The Extra Christmas Number (December 1863), and then in Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller and Additional Christmas Stories (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867).

  ‘Silver Blaze’, Arthur Conan Doyle.

  First published (as ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’) in The Strand Magazine (December 1892) and then in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (London: George Newnes, 1894).

  ‘A Country House’, Dorothy Edwards.

  First published in The Calendar of Modern Letters (August 1925) and then in Edward J. O’Brien (ed.), The Best Short Stories of 1926: English (With an Irish Supplement) (London: Jonathan Cape, 1927) and Dorothy Edwards, Rhapsody (London: Wishart and Co., 1927).

  ‘The Female Husband’, Henry Fielding.

  First published as Anon., The Female Husband: or, The Surprising History of Mrs. Mary, alias Mr. George Hamilton, Who was convicted of having married a Young Woman of Wells and lived with her as her Husband. Taken from Her own Mouth since her Confinement (London: Printed for M. Cooper, at the Globe in Pater-noster-Row, 1746).

  ‘The Howdie’, John Galt. [Unfinished.]

  First published (Parts 1 and 2) in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (September–October 1832) and then (Part 1) in John Galt, The Howdie and Other Tales, ed. William Roughead (Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis Ltd, 1923).

  ‘Six Weeks at Heppenheim’, Elizabeth Gaskell.

  First published in The Cornhill Magazine (May 1862) and then in Mrs [Elizabeth] Gaskell, The Grey Woman and Other Tales (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865).

  ‘The Three Strangers’, Thomas Hardy.

  First published in Longman’s Magazine (March 1883) and then in Thomas Hardy, Wessex Tales: Strange, Lively and Commonplace, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888), vol. 1.

  ‘John Gray o’Middleholm’, James Hogg.

  First published in James Hogg, Winter Evening Tales, collected among the Cottagers in the South of Scotland, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd; and London: G. & W. B. Whittaker, 1820), vol. 1.

  ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’, M. R. James.

  First published (as ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral: Materials for a Ghost Story’) in Contemporary Review (April 1910) and then in Montague Rhodes James, More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (London: Edward Arnold, 1911).

  ‘The Village that Voted the Earth Was Flat’, Rudyard Kipling.

  First published in Rudyard Kipling, A Diversity of Creatures (London: Macmillan and Co., 1917).

  ‘The Farm House’, Mary Lamb.

  First published in [Charles and Mary Lamb], Mrs. Leicester’s School: or, The History of Several Young Ladies, related by Themselves (London: M. J. Godwin, 1809).

  ‘Daughters of the Vicar’, D. H. Lawrence.

  First published in D. H. Lawrence, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (London: Duckworth & Co., 1914).

  ‘Suggestion’, Mrs Ernest Leverson.

  First published in The Yellow Book (April 1895).

  ‘South West and by West three-quarters West’, Frederick Marryat.

  First published in The Author of ‘Peter Simple’, etc. etc. [Frederick Marryat], Olla Podrida, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1840), vol. 3.

  ‘The Letter’, Viola Meynell.

  First published in Viola Meynell, Young Mrs. Cruse (London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1924). Reprinted by permission of Paul Dallyn. Copyright © Viola Meynell, 1924.

  ‘Betty Brown, the St Giles’s Orange Girl: with Some Account of Mrs Sponge, the Money Lender’, Hannah More.

  First published as a chapbook (and in the series ‘Cheap Repository of Moral and Religious Tracts’), Signed ‘Z’ [Hannah More] (London: Sold by J. Marshall and R. White, and by J. Hatchard; and Bath: by S. Hazard, [between 1795 and 1806]), and then in Hannah More, Stories for the Middle Ranks of Society, and Tales for the Common People, 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1818), vol. 2.

  ‘Behind the Shade’, Arthur Morrison.

  First published in Tales of Mean Streets (London: Methuen & Co., 1894). Reprinted by permission of Methuen Publishing Ltd.

  ‘The Library Window’, Margaret Oliphant.

  First published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (January 1896) and then in Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant, Stories of the Seen and the Unseen (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1902).

  ‘A Guardian of the Poor’, T. Baron Russell.

  First published in The Yellow Book (April 1896).

  ‘The Unrest-Cure’, Saki.

  First published in The Westminster Gazette (1 April 1910) and then in H. H. Munro (‘Saki’), The Chronicles of Clovis (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1911).

  ‘In Dull Brown’, Evelyn Sharp.

  First published in The Yellow Book (January 1896).

  ‘The Body Snatcher’, Robert Louis Stevenson. First published in [The] Pall Mall [Gazette] Christmas ‘Extra’ (December 1884).

  ‘Directions to the Footman’, Jonathan Swift.

  First published in Revd. Dr Swift, Directions to Servants in General; And in particular to The Butler, Cook, Footman, Coachman, Groom, House-Steward, and Land-Steward, Porter, Dairy-Maid, Chamber-Maid, Nurse, Laundress, House-Keeper, Tutoress, or Governess (Dublin: Printed by George Faulkner, 1745).

  ‘A Little Dinner at Timmins’s’, William Thackeray.

  First published in Punch (27 May–29 July 1848) and then in W. M. Thackeray, Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, vol. 3 (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856).

  ‘An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids’, Anthony Trollope.

  First published in Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper (6–13 October 1860) and then in Anthony Trollope, Tales of All Countries (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861).

  ‘The Magic Shop’, H. G. Wells.

  First published in The Strand Magazine (June 1903) and then in H. G. Wells, Twelve Stories and a Dream (London: Macmillan and Co., 1903). Reprinted by permission of United Agents LLP on behalf of The Literary Executors of the Estate of H. G. Wells.

  Every effort has been made to trace the copyright-holders of the copyright material in this book and credit the sources of the stories. Penguin regrets any oversight and upon written notification will rectify any omission in future reprints or editions. The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the above for permission to reprint stories.

  Volume 1

  DANIEL DEFOE • JONATHAN SWIFT •HENRY FIELDING • HANNAH MORE • MARY LAMB • JAMES HOGG • JOHN GALT • FREDERICK MARRYAT • WILLIAM THACKERAY • ELIZABETH GASKELL • ANTHONY TROLLOPE • WILKIE COLLINS • CHARLES DICKENS • THOMAS HARDY • MARGARET OLIPHANT • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON • ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE • ARTHUR MORRISON • ‘MRS ERNEST LEVERSON’ • EVELYN SHARP • T. BARON RUSSELL • JOSEPH CONRAD • H. G. WELLS • M. R. JAMES ‘SAKI’ • G. K. CHESTERTON • MAX BEERBOHM • ARNOLD BENNETT • D. H. L AWRENCE • RUDYARD KIPLING • STACY AUMONIER • VIOLA MEYNELL • A. E. COPPARD • E. M. DELAFIELD • DOROTHY EDWARDS • JOHN BUCHAN

  Hilarious, exuberant, subtle, tender, brutal, spectacular, and above all unexpected: these two extraordinary volumes contain the limitless possibilities of the British short story.

  This is the first anthology capacious enough to celebrate the full diversity and energy of its writers, subjects and tones. The most famous auth
ors are here, and many others, including some magnificent stories never republished since their first appearance in magazines and periodicals. The Penguin Book of the British Short Story has a permanent authority, and will be reached for year in and year out.

  This volume takes the story from its origins with Defoe, Swift and Fielding to the ‘golden age’ of the fin de siècle and Edwardian period.

  ——————

  Philip Hensher is a novelist, critic, librettist and short story writer. The Northern Clemency was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His most recent novel is The Emperor Waltz.

  Volume 2

  P. G. WODEHOUSE • ‘MALACHI’ WHITAKER • JACK COMMON • ELIZABETH BOWEN • EVELYN WAUGH • JAMES HANLEY • T. H. WHITE • LESLIE HALWARD • JULIAN MACLAREN-ROSS • ALUN LEWIS • ‘HENRY GREEN’ • SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER • W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM • ROALD DAHL • L. A. G. STRONG • T. F. POWYS • GRAHAM GREENE • G. F. GREEN • ANGUS WILSON • RHYS DAVIES • FRANCIS KING • WILLIAM SANSOM • SAMUEL SELVON • MURIEL SPARK • ROBERT AICKMAN • V. S. NAIPAUL • J. G. BALLARD • CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE • ELIZABETH TAYLOR • KINGSLEY AMIS • ALAN SILLITOE • V. S. PRITCHETT • JEAN RHYS • IAN MCEWAN • ANGELA CARTER • DORIS LESSING • PENELOPE FITZGERALD • ALASDAIR GRAY • BERNARD MACLAVERTY • SHENA MACKAY • BERYL BAIN-BRIDGE • DOUGLAS DUNN • GEORGINA HAMMICK • ADAM MARS-JONES • GEORGE MACKAY BROWN • A. S. BYATT • MARTIN AMIS • CANDIA MCWILLIAM JANICE GALLOWAY • ALI SMITH • TESSA HADLEY • ADAM MAREK • JON MCGREGOR • ZADIE SMITH

  THE BEGINNING

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