The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories

Marriage, motherhood, the battle for self-realization, bereavement, the louring of old age - women's particular preoccupations thread in and out of our literary history.

Susan Hill's collection of short stories by British women reveals the consolidations made during the post-war period as women became more confident about articulating their desires and intimate thoughts. Taken together, the stories drive a tap root into different aspects of the feminine psyche: A.S. Byatt's agonizing cry for a dead child in the The July Ghost; the encounter with self-knowledge seen in Patricia Ferguson's nurse on night duty; the tyranny exerted by food which many women will recognize in Angela Huth's The Weighing Up; Fay Weldon's sparkling, blackly funny view of a middle-class marriage.

Including contributions by, among others, Penelope Lively, Edna O'Brien, Sara Maitland, Margaret Drabble, Georgina Hammick, Rose Tremain and Elizabeth Jane Howard, this stimulating, entertaining and many-layered collection shows women writing easily, confidently and superbly well.

Author: Susan Hill

Publisher: Penguin

Released Date: 1990

ISBN: 9780140122008