H.E. Bates Companion

London: Jonathan Cape, 1940 (December 6). 256 pp. Fifteen stories, seven of which were previously unpublished.

Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote in John O'London's Weekly that Bates "is the most erratic artist; he can be both best and worst; and these uncertainties are, I think, attributable to the fact that he is the most experimental...[this collection] illustrates this restless exploration, source of many small failures but so many more successes, more sharply than do any of his previous garnerings. All are tales of human bondage; all have that delicate luminosity by which visions are seen more clearly than in the bright sunlight; all are sombre in theme." George Orwell dismisses the "neutral-tinted, eventless kind of story in which Mr. H.E. Bates excels."

Reviews:
John O'London's Weekly (January 10, 1941, Pamela Hansford Johnson, attached).
Life and Letters Today (February 1941, p. 172, A. Calder Marshall, attached)
The New Statesman and Nation (January 25, 1941, George Orwell, attached).
The Spectator (December 27, 1940, Kate O'Brien, attached)
Times Literary Supplement, December 28, 1940, p. 653, R.D. Charques, attached)

Contains: The Beauty of the Dead, The Bridge, Fuchsia, The Ferry, The Loved One, Old, The Banjo, A Scandalous Woman, Love is Not Love, Quartette, Mr. Penfold, The Goat and the Stars, The Earth, Time to Kill, The Little Jeweller.