V S Pritchett

V. S. Pritchett (Victor Sawdon Pritchett) , 1900-1997, British writer, b. Ipswich. Largely self-educated, he was a distinguished and prolific man of letters who began his career as a freelance journalist and was a foreign correspondent during the 1920s. An excellent craftsman, Pritchett had a fine wit, a sense for the ironic and darkly comic, and a talent for portraying the oddities of character. His fiction is usually peopled by members of England's lower middle class, a world of shopkeepers, salesmen, and clerks. He is best known for his brilliantly insightful short stories, which were collected in many volumes, including The Spanish Temper (1954), Blind Love (1969), and Complete Collected Stories (1991). Also a novelist, he is particularly noted for the last of his five novels, Mr. Beluncle (1951), the tale of a Puritan eccentric. Pritchett was a respected literary critic, e.g., The Tale Bearers (1980), and biographer, e.g., Balzac (1973) and Chekhov (1988), and also penned lively travel writing. He was knighted in 1975.

Bibliography: See his memoirs, A Cab at the Door (1968) and Midnight Oil (1971); biography by J. Treglown (2005).

Pritchett, Sir V. S. ( Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett) (1900–97), novelist, critic, and short story writer. His first novel, Clare Drummer (1929), was followed by several others, but Pritchett is principally known for his short stories, the first of which appeared in the Cornhill, the New Statesman, etc., in the 1920s; his first collection, The Spanish Virgin and other stories (1930), was followed by many others, including You Make Your Own Life (1938), When my Girl Comes Home (1961), The Camberwell Beauty (1974), and two volumes of Collected Stories (1982, 1983). They are distinguished by their wide social range, shrewd observation of the quirks of human nature, and humane irony. Pritchett's other works include The Living Novel (1946), studies of Balzac (1973) and Turgenev (1977), two volumes of much-praised autobiography, The Cab at the Door: Early Years (1968) and Midnight Oil (1971). He also edited the Oxford Book of Short Stories (1981). As critic he has contributed most regularly to the New Statesman, of which he became a director in 1946.