A PENGUIN ANTHOLOGY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 629, 20 July 1951, Page 5

A PENGUIN ANTHOLOGY

Siry-Having just read English Stories from _New | in spite of rather ‘than because’ of the ZB book review by A, may I comment briefly: "Responsible critics have already Suggested that this book is one of the most important collections of English short stories to have appeared in many years. Penguin New Writing, in a crucial period of history, provided and an outlet. for the best imaginative work, pafticularly that of the younger writers. If it represented a coterie, as the ZB chairman rather testily suggested, it )was a. coterie in’ the best sense, Editor Lehmann has pointed out that its contributors were drawn from many different social levels and backgrounds. Quality of work alone was the entrance qualification. What other common ground was there between, say, Sartre, Graham Greene, Frank Sargeson, Gide, V. S. Pritchett, Denton Welch and Elizabeth Bowen? Moreover,. to judge by Joseph Gurnard’s story, "Poet’s Excursion;" the journal was not above burlesquing its own editor and contributors. English Stories from New Writing is, then, a selection from 40 volumes published over 10 years. Consequently, the remarkable aspect of the ZB session was that in a review for New Zealanders, by a New Zealander, no mention whatever "was made of the important consideration that the book contained a’ story by a ‘New Zealander. Even a passing reference to this bright fact..would have made reviewer Fairburn’s familiar strice tures a little less* dull. =

JACK LOVELL

(Wellington).