Dance of the Happy Shades, the collection of short stories in which "Boys and Girls" appeared, was published in 1968. The novel Lives of Girls and Women (1971) soon followed, and a second collection of stories entitled Something I've Been Meaning To Tell You was published in 1974. In an essay written in 1978 in which these three books were discussed, critic Hallward Dahlie said Munro is "a writer who has quietly and firmly established herself over the past decade." To say that Munro gained this reputation "quietly and firmly" seems an apt estimation. From the start, Munro's critics approached her writing as that which deserved careful and serious consideration, whether their praise was highly favorable or more measured in its admiration. Her fiction has inspired a large and highly respectable body of scholarly criticism. By the time Dance of the Happy Shades was published, Munro had spent many years...