Pritchett's two volumes of autobiography, A Cab at the Door (1968) and Midnight Oil (1971), as well as certain of his collected critical essays (particularly Lasting Impressions, 1990), contain both glimpses and extended views of characters, places, events, and behavioral circumstances that weave themselves throughout his short stories.

Indeed, those books become almost required reading before one turns the attentive or analytical mind to the fiction. Thus, to understand the art, one ought to understand the artist.