Autograph manuscript of his lecture “The Short Story”, with additional notes, given at the National Book Exhibition on 3 November 1949

Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett (1900-1997)
Autograph manuscript of his lecture “The Short Story”, with additional notes, given at the National Book Exhibition on 3 November 1949
13 pages, 200 x 250mm, with an excerpt from The Daily Sketch, written by Ray Nunn, covering the Exhibition. Provenance: Given to Nunn by Pritchett; Sotheby's, 17 July 1997, lot 345.

‘The novel is 300 years old. The short story is from the beginning of time’. The present lecture discussing the merits of the short story, ‘It is as old as human conversation, the eternal I said to her, I said, it isn’t right I said…you sit on the bus and you hear this interminable story telling going on. What do you learn from listening? First, that while few of these stories have plots, they all have suspense, dramatic or emotional climax and pattern. Above all pattern’. Pritchett demonstrates his argument through the analysis of works from authors such as James Joyce, ‘that masterpiece of atmosphere…The Dead…’, Hemingway, and Woolf, claiming these as ‘the great originals of the short story’. Pritchett continues, stating that these stories ‘are not English. They are Russian, French, and American…there life is…freer, more restless, and this is far more suited to the short story writer than our …English life with its set ways and its cult of privacy’.

Aside from being a champion of the form, Pritchett was also a hugely successful writer of the short story, with his collections including Make your own Life (1938), It may never happen (1945) and When my Girl comes Home (1961). These lecture notes are likely unpublished.