V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997) was an English short story writer, novelist, literary critic, journalist, travel writer, biographer, and autobiographer. Though not an innovator in terms of style, he was n...
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Victor Sawdon (V. S.) Pritchett is an eminent man of letters who has published extensively in different genres; his work includes five novels; numerous volumes of short stories, many of which have bee...
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Literary journalists and reviewers of the past ten to fifteen years have been referring to V. S. Pritchett more and more frequently as "the Grand Old Man of British letters." The highly favorable, pro...
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Critical Essay by Walter Sullivan
[V. S. Pritchett] … has been writing good short stories for many years. He is … no longer at the top of his form, but the leading story in The Camberwel...
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Critical Essay by B. L. Reid
V. S. Pritchett's first volume [of reminiscences] A Cab at the Door, takes its title from the family's habit of moving lodgings after each new failed enterpr...
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Critical Essay by Irving Howe
[In "The Gentle Barbarian"] V. S. Pritchett evokes the characteristic Turgenev novel—that story of unfulfilled affections, political disappointments,...
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Critical Essay by Michael Irwin
For all the praise [Pritchett] has won, his work has never been fashionable in academic circles, and it is interesting to spectulate why.
In several respects his manner...
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Critical Essay by Eudora Welty
[Any] Pritchett story is all of it alight and busy at once, like a well-going fire. Wasteless and at the same time well fed, it shoots up in flame from its own spark lik...
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Critical Essay by Sarah Pratt
Pritchett notes his debt to … other scholars at the outset [of The Gentle Barbarian: The Life and Work of Turgenev]. But he also brings two crucial gifts of his ow...
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Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt
Sir Victor has, throughout his long career as a reviewer and critic, been able to find and describe accurately what he calls, in The Living Novel, 'the new point i...
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Critical Essay by John Gross
V. S. Pritchett is not much given to quarreling with other critics, but at one point in his new collection of essays ["The Myth Makers"] he does allow himsel...
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Critical Essay by John Harvey
[The qualities evident in the essays which comprise The Myth Makers] are a catholic enthusiasm for literature, a clear, level-headed and pithy style, a versatile sympathy...
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Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard
As I infer him from his books, V. S. Pritchett must be one of the most pleasant men in the world….
I only wish I could like his short stories, which have becom...
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Critical Essay by Jonathan Penner
Most of [the nine stories in On the Edge of the Cliff] are love stories. Most of the love concerned is adulterous. Yet one is struck not by similarity but by variety:...
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Critical Essay by Carole Cook
Age has its prerogatives, excellence being foremost among them. We bow to V. S. Pritchett. Nearing 80, he is at the top of his powers, and he is writing at white heat.
Th...
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Critical Essay by Daphne Merkin
Although varying in quality, [the stories in On the Edge of the Cliff] are written with a quiet confidence in their own powers of evocation. One need only look at some ...
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Critical Essay by Robert Towers
Pritchett writes as one who has been nourished rather than inhibited by his literary forebears. Though the tradition to which he belongs has shown signs of enfeeblement...
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V. S. Pritchett
V(ictor) S(awdon) Pritchett
