Brigid Brophy is a very young and admirably industrious British writer. She is possessed of a talented, imaginative intelligence, and shows [in "The Crown Princess and Other Stories"] considerable courage in her choice and manipulation of subject: a Graustarkian princess who is mad about the movies and pores over "fan" magazines all day long; a flamboyantly continental Rumanian lady who, having married into a British family, tries vainly and absurdly in wartime England to out-British the British;…; a young female writer who, through friendship with a number of older authors, searches out the true means of judging literature.

All this makes for an interesting list of contents; but each of her stories, in one way or another, fails to hold the reader or go beyond its arduous intentions. Some of the stories, like "The Financial World" (about the industrialist), "Mrs. Mandford's Drawing Room" (the Rumanian woman), and "Fordie...