SOURCE: "Time and Place—and Suspense," in The New York Times Book Review, June 30, 1963, pp. 5, 27.

Welty is a highly-respected American fiction writer and critic, whose works include the novel Losing Battles (1970) and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980). In this review of The Stories of William Sansom, Welty notes the "wonderful set-pieces of description in the book" and declares that Sansom can "hardly be surpassed" in this regard.

Since the appearance of his first book of stories, Fireman Flower, 20 years ago, the enormously talented English writer, William Sansom, has been warmly read and warmly admired for his stories, novels and travel pieces in this country. This is a welcome collection of 33 of his stories, here presented with an excellent appreciation by exactly the right fellow-writer, Elizabeth Bowen.

One sees different things, or sees familiar qualities differently, in re-reading at a stretch a good writer's work. One gets to...