SOURCE: Greene, Hugh. “Introduction.” In Selected Short Stories, edited by Hugh Greene, pp. 5-9. London: The Bodley Head, 1975.

In the following essay, Greene assesses Jacobs's literary achievement and discusses autobiographical aspects of his work.

In a writing life of thirty years between 1896 and 1926 W. W. Jacobs produced twelve volumes of short stories, containing in all more than one hundred and fifty stories, one volume with two long short stories and five full-length novels. Then for the remaining seventeen years of his life, although he had been one of the most successful, and loved, writers of his time he fell completely silent: he never took up his pen again. For several years now not one of his books, no selection of his stories, has been in print.

And yet his achievement had been very great. To my mind there is no doubt that, with P. G. Wodehouse and George...