There is not an extensive body of critical work devoted to "The Daffodil Sky", but this lack of commentary says less about the story's quality than it does about Bates's reputation in general. Relative to the number of stories Bates produced, there are simply very few studies of them. Two easily identi- fiable reasons account for this state of affairs. First, Bates was a prolific author. During the 1950s alone he produced four short story collections and many more novels and novellas. Therefore, critics have always had a variety of targets to aim at when discussing his work. (Also, since short stories are by nature limited in size and scope, critics rarely dwell on a single short story by Bates, preferring in general to discuss a number of them in any particular article.)

The second, more troubling reason for the lack of material on "The Daffodil...