"Smoke: And Other Early Stories" [a collection of Barnes's earliest writing, published in 1982] doesn't contain any major work and so is probably not the best place to begin reading Barnes. But for those who know her writing the early stories will give fascinating glimpses of the way a light style evolved into the high and tragic manner of "Nightwood."

The main strength of the early stories lies in their sharp and comic cameo portraits and Barnes's witty, if somewhat forced, side comments. (pp. 9, 30)

The closest analogy I can think of to Barnes's manner in some of these stories is that of Ronald Firbank. Barnes has a superb but peculiar sense of humor, as when she writes, "for extra decoration she had removed her earrings."

There are stray sentences in the early stories that might belong to drafts for "Nightwood": "The difference between the bow of the bourgeois and...