SOURCE: "Trifle Angus Wilson': Two Volumes of Short Stories" in Angus Wilson, Twayne Publishers, 1985, pp. 12-34.

Gardner is an English-born Canadian educator and critic. In this excerpt from her book-length study of Wilson, she discusses The Wrong Set and Such Darling Dodos.

"Mr. Wilson is a satirist," roundly declared an anonymous reviewer when The Wrong Set appeared in 1949. Since many of its stories, and many of those in Such Darling Dodos (1950), are lively, sharp, observant, and particularly concerned with social relationships and social class, it is not very surprising that they should have prompted a reviewer, pressed for time and space, to use this convenient label. "Satire" is also a term that Wilson himself employs quite frequently in The Wild Garden when discussing his early work.

At the same time, however, Wilson has denied any idea that satirizing people is the whole of his intention and it is...