SOURCE: Introduction to Selected Stories by A. E. Coppard, Jonathan Cape, 1972, pp. vii-xii.

A Persian-born English novelist, short story writer, and dramatist, Lessing is known as a powerful contemporary writer working primarily in the realist tradition. Her works display a broad range of interests and focus on such specific topics as racism, communism, feminism, and mysticism. In the following excerpt from Lessing's introduction to Selected Stories, she offers a personal reminiscence of Coppard.

[The stories in Selected Stories] are as fine as any we have. In friends' houses, on the shelves where the books stay which will be kept always, you find Coppard. Talking to people, not necessarily literary, who have read their own way into literature, and who use books for nourishment and not debate, Coppard's tales are found to be treasures. He wrote a good many, some now in collections hard to come by. They are...