The Working Novelist
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Few critics write with the authority of a practitioner, but V. S. Pritchett — celebrated short story writer, novelist, and one of the twentieth century's most distinguished literary minds — does exactly that in The Working Novelist. This collection of essays, originally published as reviews in the New Statesman, presents incisive assessments of major novelists from Turgenev and Chekhov to Flaubert, Kipling, and beyond, examining not merely what these writers achieved, but precisely how they achieved it. Pritchett's gaze is that of a craftsman who understands the machinery beneath the prose, and his judgements carry the weight of hard-won experience. What makes The Working Novelist so enduringly valuable is Pritchett's ability to illuminate the interior life of fiction — the decisions, habits, and obsessions that shape a novelist's art — with both wit and scholarly precision. His style is elegant yet accessible, balancing deep critical insight with the kind of infectious enthusiasm that reminds the reader why literature matters in the first place. At once a work of criticism and a passionate defence of the novel as a living form, this collection leaves the reader wondering not only about the writers discussed, but about the very nature of storytelling itself.
Author: V. S. Pritchett
Format: Hardback
Published: 1965, Chatto & Windus
Genre: Essays
Condition remarks:
Book: Acceptable
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: Ex-library with usual markings
Few critics write with the authority of a practitioner, but V. S. Pritchett — celebrated short story writer, novelist, and one of the twentieth century's most distinguished literary minds — does exactly that in The Working Novelist. This collection of essays, originally published as reviews in the New Statesman, presents incisive assessments of major novelists from Turgenev and Chekhov to Flaubert, Kipling, and beyond, examining not merely what these writers achieved, but precisely how they achieved it. Pritchett's gaze is that of a craftsman who understands the machinery beneath the prose, and his judgements carry the weight of hard-won experience. What makes The Working Novelist so enduringly valuable is Pritchett's ability to illuminate the interior life of fiction — the decisions, habits, and obsessions that shape a novelist's art — with both wit and scholarly precision. His style is elegant yet accessible, balancing deep critical insight with the kind of infectious enthusiasm that reminds the reader why literature matters in the first place. At once a work of criticism and a passionate defence of the novel as a living form, this collection leaves the reader wondering not only about the writers discussed, but about the very nature of storytelling itself.