The Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories

by Susan Hill (Editor)

Over half of the short stories written during this century have been writen by women. This book is an anthology of British women's short stories and authors represented include Rebecca West, Jean Rhys, Elizabeth Bowen, Olivia Manning, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Lessing and Rose Tremain.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

Unknown Binding

First published October 25, 1990

About the author

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1942. Her hometown was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and some short stories especially "Cockles and Mussels".

She attended Scarborough Convent School, where she became interested in theatre and literature. Her family left Scarborough in 1958 and moved to Coventry where her father worked in car and aircraft factories. Hill states that she attended a girls’ grammar school, Barr's Hill. Her fellow pupils included Jennifer Page, the first Chief Executive of the Millennium Dome. At Barrs Hill she took A levels in English, French, History and Latin, proceeding to an English degree at King's College London. By this time she had already written her first novel, The Enclosure which was published by Hutchinson in her first year at university. The novel was criticised by The Daily Mail for its sexual content, with the suggestion that writing in this style was unsuitable for a "schoolgirl".

Her next novel Gentleman and Ladies was published in 1968. This was followed in quick succession by A Change for the Better, I'm the King of the Castle, The Albatross and other stories, Strange Meeting, The Bird of Night, A Bit of Singing and Dancing and In the Springtime of Year, all written and published between 1968 and 1974.

In 1975 she married Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells and they moved to Stratford upon Avon. Their first daughter, Jessica, was born in 1977 and their second daughter, Clemency, was born in 1985. Hill has recently founded her own publishing company, Long Barn Books, which has published one work of fiction per year.

Librarian's Note: There is more than one author by this name.

Reviews

[Merl Fluin · Rating 2 out of 5]

42 SHORT STORIES IN 42 DAYS*

DAY 41: Summer Picnic, by Elizabeth Jane Howard
★★
Three generations of women reflect on life and love during a picnic in a distant corner of time and space where no one has ever uttered the words "jeez, check your privilege".

DAY 24: Mannequin, by Jean Rhys
★★
Meh.

DAY 23: Weekend, by Fay Weldon
★
Small masterpiece, says the editor's introduction; big cowpat, says I.

DAY 22: Stone Trees, by Jane Gardam
★★
Well crafted and all that, but ultimately I don't get the point of literary fiction where made-up characters bang on about their made-up feelings.

*The rules:
– Read one short story a day, every day for six weeks
– Read no more than one story by the same author within any 14-day period
– Deliberately include authors I wouldn't usually read
– Review each story in one sentence or less

Any fresh reading suggestions/recommendations will be gratefully received 📚

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this was mostly white middle class women of England stories, with picnics and second homes featuring. Given this (& Susan Hill acknowledges in the intro, these were simply the stories she'd liked) they are all pretty good: finely written, exquisite. And in a non-middle class one, great to see nurse/writer Patricia Ferguson's hospital ward set piece. I loved her collection 'Indefinite Nights': https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Robert Bagnall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curate's egg, strong on tone and character but lacking in narrative:

Taylor - have you ever actually met children?
Mackay - lives of quiet desperation and all that, enjoyable if lacking in narrative
Boylan - one of the stronger ones
Drabble - started well, petered out
Bowen - another one creating tone without a great story to tell
Maitland - having got to the end of the book this has left no impression upon me whatsoever
Hammick - see Bowen
Spark - enjoyable waspishness
Byatt - a standout here, but not sure it really works as a ghost story
Howard - as per Maitland, but it's only about five pages so hardly surprising
Ferguson - one of my favourites
Huth - rather nice character study of middle age thickening
Warner - it's incest. So what?
O'Brien - another atmospheric character study
Tremain - again, strong on tone and character, capturing a point of transition in lives, but all a bit static (are you seeing a pattern too?)
Macauley - short, sweet but inconsequential
Harris - another favourite, even if, like virtually all of them, it's more reminiscence or character study than story per se
Blackwood - another good one, a character with a dilemma - and dilemma leads to decision which leads to conflict which leads to empathy which leads to reader engagement - even if it's whether to leave a dinner party for a dead dog
Kesson - an engrossing study of a child having its strings pulled
Devlin - I'm not sure this would have made it on Tales of the Unexpected
Rhys - a character in search of a story - and a coat
Fainlight - another one that I'm flicking through trying to recall. Do I have Alzheimer's or are some of these just not very memorable?
Lively - I enjoyed this, even if things just seemed to get in the way of anything happening
Gardam - I only read this 36 hours ago and I wouldn't be able to tell you much about in under torture
Weldon - ending on an up note, even if I wanted to kill Martin. And I'm a bloke.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is what I call my "dip in " . There is a story in there that covers every mood your feeling even when I need a good cry ( read "addy"). It was a title on my literature reading list during college and im so glad it was .

[Marsha Dermott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eclectic collection about the very varied lives of women, written between 1927 -1988. They reveal a growing confidence in women articulating their innermost desires, outrage, grief, humour, cynicism. The Editor, Susan Hill, describes these short stories as 'quiet, small-scale, intimate stories - about the everyday but not trivial matters - about the business of being human and about the concerns of the human heart'. I enjoyed this collection because the 70's/80's was my formative era, when there was a steady but determined feminist presence infiltrating the non-political correctness. I chuckle that today the modern women's short stories would include so many more revelations spoken from the heart. Come on lads - where is your contribution, spoken truthfully from the heart? I feel as though men are struggling and being left behind.

[Matilda Burn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, so this is a compilation of short stories brought together by one person, so naturally it reflects this one person's tastes. This book as a consequence is unnervingly upper-middle class, totally white and very same-y. The situations and stories are very different, but you could imagine most of them happening to the same woman - probably called Christina, Sally, or (weirdly) Lalage (I have never heard of this name but it cropped up twice in this book) - in 1950s-1980s Britain. And that's despite the fact that some of these are set in Ireland, and some of the stories have men as protagonists.

Despite that, some of these stories are just totally fantastic, hence the 3 stars. Some 5 star stories for me are "The Visitor" by Elizabeth Bowen, which as someone who is pre-emptively going through some pretty terrible grief made me cry so much. "Addy" by Caroline Blackwood also made me cry, as a dog-lover.

On the other end of the spectrum, there were some nothing burger stories in here. "Mannequin" by Jean Rhys (and I love Jean Rhys so this pains me) was dull, same with "Miss Anstruther's letters" by Rose Macaulay.

An impressive, non-diverse set of short stories but a little microcosm of early white British feminism, which contains a lot of barely-concealed intolerable rage. Tasty, if you're into that sort of thing.

[Claire Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly dated 'modern' collection of stories - not a single black or bame author represented and some pretty dubious accounts of bame characters in some of the stories; nothing surprising about the form or narrative approach; but having said that - the stories that are here each settled on me in a different way, and there interesting things to say about the experiences of being a woman and being a creative in a world which requires so much of women. Worth a read, although I imagine it's time for a new edition with some glaring omissions rectified.

[Emma Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed some of these, a well selected set of short stories!

[Em · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather wonderful collection of short stories which I have been dipping in and out of since August, my particular favourites are Fay Weldon, A. S. Byatt and Penelope Fitzgerald but the quality overall is excellent.

[Caramac · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual in short story compilations some wonderful ones and some less so.

[Tatyana]

Some stories out of this collection are very memorable, for example "Weighing Up"