Though known primarily for his novels, chiefly for the allegorical Mr. Weston's Good Wine (1927), Theodore Francis Powys composed between 1910 and the early 1930s approximately 150 short stories principally set in the English countryside. While belonging to the rural tradition of English literature, Powys did not view life as a pastoral romp but rather, in the words of Norman Nicholson, as a Hobbesian "nightmare land halfway between Bedlam and Hell." Against a rustic backdrop Powys sought to articulate his dark vision of the human condition. The son of a country vicar, he rejected orthodox notions of Christianity while still clinging to a strong Christian morality. As a reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1932) put it, Powys was more "an inverted moralist, his hope not in everlasting life, but in everlasting death as the only sure release from the pain and cruelty of which life is woven."

Born on 20 December...