Literary journalists and reviewers of the past ten to fifteen years have been referring to V. S. Pritchett more and more frequently as "the Grand Old Man of British letters." The highly favorable, prominently placed, and usually lengthy reviews that followed the publication of Complete Collected Stories (1991) and, to a slightly lesser extent, Complete Collected Essays (1992) brought Pritchett's achievement to a new level of general awareness. Most readers who are familiar with Pritchett as an essayist, practical literary critic, biographer, autobiographer, travel writer, and, most especially, short-story writer feel he has earned the high praise he has come to be accorded. They find quality, range, and plenitude: Complete Collected Stories supplies 82 stories; Complete Collected Essays, 203 essays. Only Pritchett's merits as a novelist have been sensibly and justifiably questioned.

Pritchett's short fiction is regarded by many as at least the equal of any written in England in the past...