The Collected Short Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction)

Jean Rhys first began publishing her short stories in the early 1920s and she continued writing short fiction until the late 1970s. She is without doubt one of the finest short story writers of the modernist era and, to my tastes, one of the finest fiction writers of the twentieth century. It is surprising that until 2017, a collected edition of her stories has not appeared in England (previously there only existed a hard to get American "collected stories" from the 1980s) and previously you had to locate certain stories in out-of-print paperbacks from the 1970s and 80s.

This attractive Penguin edition, with an introduction Diana Athill, runs to almost 400 pages and includes all of Rhys's published short form fiction. Presented show more chronologically, you get a real sense for Rhys's development as a writer; from the Parisian stories of the 1920s to the Caribbean literature of her later years when she was thinking back to her childhood in Dominica. An indispensable counterpart to Rhys's novels and her unfinished autobiography, the collected stories demonstrate Rhys's laconic brilliance and her unique literary voice.

Although this edition will be particularly useful for students and scholars of Rhys, perhaps the only disappointment is that there aren't any footnotes and the three page introduction is a rather perfunctory affair. Still, let's hope that this publications suggests a renewed interest in Rhys and that a critical edition of her works (long overdue) is in the works. show less

I guess any collected stories over a long period will have ups and downs. The middle period ones are very good, sharp, strange, on edge. The early and late ones tend much towards scenes from a life, nicely enough drawn and interesting enough but far from remarkable. I'd read the middle third again.