For fifty years Mollie Panter-Downes's name was associated with The New Yorker, for which she wrote a regular 'Letter from London', book reviews and over thirty short stories; of the twenty-one in Good Evening, Mrs Craven, written between 1939 and 1944, only two had ever been reprinted - these very English stories have, until now, been unavailable to English readers. Exploring most aspects of English domestic life during the war, they are about separation, sewing parties, fear, evacuees sent to the country, obsession with food, the social revolutions of wartime. In the Daily Mail Angela Huth called Good Evening, Mrs Craven 'my especial find' and Ruth Gorb in the Ham &amp; High contrasted the humour of some of the stories with the desolation of others: 'The mistress, unlike the wife, has to worry and mourn in secret for her man; a middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camaraderie of the air-raids is over...'

Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Mollie Panter-Downes

Persephone Books

Minnie's Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

For sheer range of mood and matter Mollie Panter-Downes leaves most of her rivals standing. Nothing more vivid has been written about those early days of soft sunshine when it was hard to disentangle the dream from the reality, a long summer afternoon in which fantasy flourished, and the barrage balloons glittered "like swollen fairy elephants lolling against the blue".

London War Notes

History

Military

Persephone Books Ltd.

There are thirty stories, spanning nearly a century (from 1896–1984). Twelve are taken from the twelve volumes of stories we have published over the last few years; nine were previously published in our quarterly (later biannually) magazine during the last decade; and nine have been selected especially for this collection. They are presented in the order they were written. A quarter are by North American women writers.\nIn dull brown / Evelyn Sharp (1896) -- The bedquilt / Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1906) -- Her first ball / Katherine Mansfield (1921) -- The other wife / Colette (1924) -- The casualty list / Winifred Holtby (1932) -- Thunder shower / Malachi Whitaker (1933) -- The exile / Joanna Cannan (1939) -- Safety zone / Dorothy van Doren (1939) -- After tea / Dorothy Whipple (1941) -- Monsieur Rose / Irène Nèmirovsky (1941) -- Going home / Sally Benson (1942) -- Frowning Caryatid / Lettice Cooper (1942) -- Miss Anstruther's letters / Rose Macaulay (1942) -- The house at hove / Diana Gardner (1944) -- Year of decision / Mollie Panter-Downes (1944) -- We have to sit opposite / Ethel Wilson (1945) -- The little willow / Frances Towers (1947) -- Monkey-barges / Emma Smith (1947) -- The blessing that must be earned / Freda Aykroyd (1947) -- The professor's daughter / Margaret Bonham (1948) -- The prisoner / Elizabeth Berridge (1948) -- Beside the still waters / Mollie-Panter Downes (1948) -- To open a door / Kathleen Warren (1951) -- The proof / Mary Rickwood (1954) -- The green heart / Jane McClure (1955) -- No laughing matter / Diana Athill (1961) -- Sunday morning / Dorothy Whipple (1961) -- For good / Alice Adams (1977) -- Accidents / Carol Shields (1983) -- Gilbert / Rosamunde Pilcher (1984).

The Second Persephone Book of Short Stories

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Irène Némirovsky

Dorothy Whipple

ROSE MACAULAY

Sally Benson

Katherine Mansfield

Winifred Holtby

Lettice, Cooper

Malachi WHITAKER

Evelyn Sharp

Joanna Cannan

Dorothy Van Doren

Diana Gardner

Colette Gauthier-Villars

Short Stories & Anthologies

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Books by Mollie Panter-Downes