Short Stories for Children
by Walter De la Mare
The publication of Short Stories for Children celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Walter de la Mare's death. It is also the culmination of a major literary enterprise. For many people, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) is as great a writer of fiction as of poetry. But, the majority of his short stories, of which there are a hundred, have long been unavailable. Short Stories brings them all together in three volumes in the first comprehensive collection to be published. The third and last volume, Short Stories for Children, starts with Broomsticks and Other Tales of 1925, with its twelve stories, and continues with The Lord Fish of 1933 with seven stories. It includes three distinctive stories, 'Pigtails, Ltd', 'The Thief' and 'A Nose', that have never been reprinted since they originally appeared in Broomsticks. Quirky, disparate, unpredictable, acutely observed, sometimes frightening, and often preoccupied with states of mind and personal identity, these stories have much in...