The publication of Short Stories 1895-1926 celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Walter de la Mare's death. It is also the culmination of a major literary enterprise. For many people Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) is as great a writer of fiction as of poetry. But the majority of his short stories, of which there are a hundred, have long been unavailable. Short Stories brings them all together in three volumes in the first comprehensive collection to be published. De la Mare's earliest published works were stories, and he continued writing and rewriting stories throughout the rest of his life. There was always a creative counterpoint between the themes and imagery of his prose and his poetry - such as the dream, childhood, the house, night, love lost and regained, solitude and the traveller. A full understanding of either is impossible without knowledge of both. TLS on Short Stories 1895-1926 and Short Stories 1927-1956: 'What strikes one most about [them] is how truly peculiar they are... it is good to see these dark and disquieting stories back in print.' Martin Seymour-Smith in Scotland on Sunday on Short Stories 1895-1926: 'He was so..."great" that, like all the greatest, his greatness functions as an assumption that goes hardly even recognized...the chief emotion is, as it should be, one of immense gratitude.' Lord David Cecil: 'Beautiful, enigmatic and disquieting stories.' Angela Carter: 'De la Mare is a master of mise-en-scene...Prose with the most vivid and unsettling intensity, which resembles some of what the surrealists were producing in France...' Contents of Short Stories 1895-1926 : (1) The Riddle and Other Stories (1923): The Almond Tree; The Count's Courtship; The Looking-Glass; Miss Duveen; Selina's Parable; Seaton's Aunt; The Bird of Travel; The Bowl; The Three Friends; Lispet, Lispett and Vaine; The Tree; Out of the Deep; The Creatures; The Riddle; The Vats. (2) Ding Dong Bell (1924): Lichen; Benighted; Strangers and Pilgrims; Winter. (3) The Connoisseur and Other Stories (1926): Mr Kempe; Missing; The Connoisseur; Disillusioned; The Nap; Pretty Poll; All Hallows; The Wharf; The Lost Track. (4) Uncollected stories: Kismet; The Hangman Luck; A Mote; The Village of Old Age; The Moon's Miracle; The Giant; De Mortuis; The Rejection of the Rector; The Match-Maker; The Budget; The Pear-Tree; Leap Year; Promise at Dusk; Two Days in Town.
