[Isak Dinesen's] literary career falls into three distinct periods. There is the first, spectacular period, represented by her first three books—Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Out of Africa (1937), Winter's Tales (1942)—in which she appeared as a fully matured artist and made the reputation she has today, for her reputation still rests on her first three books. There is the long hiatus of fifteen years during which her only book was the novel, The Angelic Avengers, a thriller which she published in 1946 under the name of Pierre Andrézel, and which she was not for many years willing to acknowledge. There is the third period of recrudescence, remarkable for a writer in her seventies, which saw in rapid succession two volumes of stories, Last Tales in 1957 and Anecdotes of Destiny in 1958, a collection in 1961 of four more African reminiscences, Shadows on the Grass, and the posthumously published story Ehrengard in...