55 SHORT STORIES FROM THE NEW YORKER

An anthology which has been drawn from appearance in this magazine over the past ten years and which is an impressive affirmation of sustained quality of writing in this medium. Of the stories which have already had a more permanent imprint as title stories of collections, there are Irwin Shaw's Act of Faith, Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, Robert McLaughlin's A Short Wait Between Trains. And there are many, many contributors of acknowledged proficiency; Kay Boyle, John Cheever, Victoria Lincoln, Robert Coates, James Thurber, Sally Benson, Ludwig Bemelmans, E.B. White, William Maxwell, John O'Hara, Christine Weston, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Jean Stafford, Oliver La Farge, Bessie Breuer, Mollie Panter-Downes, John Collier, Jessamyn West, Nancy Hale, Isabel Bolton, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A.J. Liebling, Carson McCullers, all of whom are already familiar to the reading public. The desired homogeneity of ""theme and technique"" has been accomplished here through the basis of selection, and I can think of no single volume of short stories which could better satisfy for both reading pleasure and literary quality.