SOURCE: Bannon, Barbara. Review of The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer, by Elizabeth Spencer. Publishers Weekly 218, no. 25 (19 December 1980): 40.

In the following review, Bannon contends that Spencer is a stellar Southern author.

The 33 stories in this impressive four-decade retrospective collection [The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer] make superb reading, and show why Elizabeth Spencer, author of Light in the Piazza, is considered an outstanding Southern writer. She belongs in the “rare company” of Katherine Mansfield, says Eudora Welty in her introduction. Each tale, be it concerned with shadow or with light, is a gem. Fine, powerful storytelling is enhanced by an intimate, immediate sense of place, a faultless sense for words and for the language of hearts. Spencer's characteristic understatement and precision of detail heighten the impact of her perceptions as she writes of home (Mississippi) or Italy, her second country: “There's a second country for everybody, one way or another...