Life, Be Still!

H. A. Manhood was one of the most highly regarded short story writers of the 1930s. His work was praised by John Galsworthy, Henry Williamson, Hugh Walpole and H. E. Bates, who was to become a good friend. His British and American publishers, Jonathan Cape and Viking respectively, thought so highly of him that they paid him a salary to give him the time and space just to write, a most unusual arrangement which demonstrated their respect for his work. His stories were in demand both from popular papers such as the Evening News and John O’London’s Weekly, and from more literary periodicals such as the London Mercury and the Adelphi. They were included in annual ‘best short story’ anthologies and in retrospectives of the masterpieces of English Literature. Yet thirty years later he had all but stopped writing, and had become largely forgotten. This selection of some of his finest stories aims to reintroduce readers to a craftsman-writer with the skill to surprise and delight even the most jaded of readers through the freshness and succinct aptness of his phrasing, and the human insight to present the tenor of entire lives in miniature, in the telling of a single incident. It was A. E. Coppard who noted that the short story should not be seen as a cut-down version of the novel: it was a different (and older) form with its origins in the folk tale and fairy tale, the fireside yarn, the pub anecdote. These sources influence our expectations: we look for evidence of the universal in the local, of the general lot in the particular fate. At the same time, we also seek to hear of the exception – the curious, the strange, the untoward – because they are an inevitable part of our existence too and perhaps what gives it spice. Coppard understood all this perfectly well in his own work, and so did Manhood. Their themes are ancient and everlasting: love, revenge, lust, peace, envy, generosity. These are seen at work in the lives of well-characterised individuals of the sort we might meet in a country inn, or by the wayside, yet there is still a sense of the timeless and immortal in the telling of these particular incidents. (From the Introduction by Mark Valentine)