The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant - Hardcover

Gallant, Mavis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0771033087 ISBN 13: 9780771033087

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd, 1996

Synopsis

In her preface to this book Mavis Gallant describes her life as a writer of fiction: “I still do not know what impels anyone of sound mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist. If it is child’s play, an extension of make-believe–something one is frequently assured by persons who write about writing–how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as natural an occupation as riding a racing bike over the Alps? Perhaps the cultural attache at a Canadian embassy who said to me ‘Yes, but what do you really do?’ was expressing an adult opinion.”

What Mavis Gallant really does is write some of the finest short stories in the English language. She has been doing so since 1950, the year that The New Yorker accepted one of her short stories and changed her life. Over the years, as her stories in book form reached a wider audience she–like Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood–has made Canadian short stories a presence on the world’s literary scene, and on our bestseller lists.

Her reputation is best described by the American writer Fran Lebowitz, who recently wrote: “The irrefutable master of the short story in English, Mavis Gallant has, among her colleagues, many admirers, but no peer. She is the standout. She is the standard-bearer. She is the standard.”

In tribute to her extraordinary career this elegant 900-page volume brings together the work of her life-time. It contains no fewer than 52 stories written over four decades and grouped according to the periods in which they are set, starting with the 1930s.

Predictably, selecting from her work for this volume was no easy task. Writing in praise of Mavis Gallant in 1993, Robertson Davies made an interesting estimate: “She has written many short stories. My calculation suggests that she has written in this form at least the equivalent of twenty novels.” That extraordinary life’s work is well represented here, demonstrating on every page what Alice Adams has called “the astounding precision of her language, the range and generosity of her intelligence, her marvellous wit.”

Even Mavis Gallant’s most devoted admirers will find stories here that they do not know, or stories that they rediscover like long-lost friends. For newer admirers this is a treasure trove, a remarkable book by a modern Canadian master that deserves to be read again and again.

About this title

Review

‘Awesome. These stories are the product of a daunting talent ... triumphant’ -- London Review of Books

‘Gallant is funny, exacting and stern – in fact, an old fashioned moralist ... Luminescent, subtle and lasting’ -- Guardian

‘Gallant is one of the great short-story writers of our time’ -- Michael Ondaatje

About the Author

Born in Montreal in 1922, Mavis Gallant left a career as a leading journalist in that city to move to Paris in 1950 to write.

Since that time she has been publishing stories on a regular basis in The New Yorker, many of which have been anthologized. Her world-wide reputation has been established by books such as From the Fifteenth District and Home Truths, which won the Governor General’s Award in 1982. In that same year she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, becoming a Companion of the Order in 1993, the year that she published Across the Bridge and was the recipient of a special tribute at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto. In 1996, The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant was published to univer

About this edition

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0771033087
• ISBN 13: 9780771033087
• Binding: Hardcover