When William Sansom's fiction first appeared in the 1940s, it was hailed by critics and the public alike. His trademark at the time was meticulous detail; borrowing heavily from the styles of Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe, he created haunting visions out of everyday people and events. While critics at first noted his direct appeal to the eye, his later stories began to appeal to the ear, to the reader's sense of rhythm and movement. The playful, colorful language in the later stories includes puns and coinages that uniquely suit his characters and situations. Some critics, however, consider his meticulousness with sensual detail to be his main flaw. But author Elizabeth Bowen, in the introduction to The Stories of William Sansom (1963), describes him as "a writer whose faculties not only suit the short story but are suited by it--suited and, one may feel, enhanced."

Sansom was born...