This collection brings together Shirley Hazzard’s published and unpublished short fiction—twenty-eight stories in all. The book is divided into three sections, keeping together as a group her two early collections: the first ten stories are those collected in Cliffs of Fall (1963), followed by the eight stories from People in Glass Houses (1967). Of these, all but one were originally published in The New Yorker (“In One’s Own House” was first published in Mademoiselle). Of the final ten uncollected and unpublished stories, “Le Nozze” and “The Sack of Silence” were uncovered in typescript among Hazzard’s papers, which are now held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York City. The remaining eight stories in the final section were published as follows: “Woollahra Road” in 1961; “Forgiving” in 1964; “Comfort” in 1964; “Out of Itea” in 1965; “The Everlasting Delight” in 1967; “The Statue and the Bust” in 1971; “Leave It to Me” in 1971; and “Sir Cecil’s Ride” in 1974. Most appeared in The New Yorker (“Forgiving” was first published in Ladies’ Home Journal, “The Statue and the Bust” in McCall’s, and “Leave It to Me” in Meanjin), and have not previously been collected.

People in Glass Houses brought together stories that had some loose connections between characters, and on the Contents page the stories were numbered, as if to suggest chapters. In a later republication, the book was subtitled A Novel, but there is no suggestion in Hazzard’s papers to indicate that she thought of the book as a novel, and as a collection it certainly lacks the tight, consummate plotting that would become one of her hallmarks as a novelist. And alongside the twenty-eight stories included here, Shirley Hazzard also published, across her writing career, sections of her novels as stand-alone pieces: four chapters of The Transit of Venus and three of The Great Fire appeared between 1976 and 1994, and The Evening of the Holiday was first published as a long short story in 1965. Most of these extracts appeared in The New Yorker (an extract from The Great Fire appeared with the title “Longing” in Antaeus magazine in 1994). These extracts have not been included in the present collection.

BRIGITTA OLUBAS

Also by Shirley Hazzard

ALSO BY SHIRLEY HAZZARD

FICTION

The Great Fire

The Transit of Venus

The Bay of Noon

People in Glass Houses

Cliffs of Fall

NONFICTION

Greene on Capri

Countenance of Truth

Defeat of an Ideal

Praise for Collected Stories

Praise for Collected Stories

“This definitive collection of Hazzard’s short stories is a welcome reminder of her remarkable talent … Hazzard’s stories, almost exclusively published in the New Yorker, built her early reputation. This impressive collection confirms their enduring stature.”

—DINAH BIRCH, The Times Literary Supplement