PENGUIN BOOKS
THE COLLECTED STORIES
William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He attended a number of Irish schools and later Trinity College, Dublin. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters.
Among his books are Two Lives (1991; comprising the novellas Reading Turgenev, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and My House in Umbria), which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year; The Collected Stories (1992), chosen by The New York Times as one of the best books of the year; the bestselling Felicia’s Journey (1994), which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Sunday Express Prize; After Rain (1996), chosen as one of the Eight Best Books of the Year by the editors of The New York Times Book Review; Death in Summer (1998), which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and most recently, The Hill Bachelors (2000).
Many of William Trevor’s stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. He has also written plays for the stage, and for radio and television. In 1977, Trevor was named honorary Commander of the British Empire in recognition of his services to literature. In 1996, he was the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
William Trevor lives in Devon, England.
THE COLLECTED STORIES
WILLIAM TREVOR
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd 1992
First published in the United States of America
by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1992
Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1993
17 19 20 18
Copyright © William Trevor, 1992
All rights reserved
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Most of the stories in this collection appeared in the following books by Mr. Trevor, all of which were published by Viking Penguin: The Day We Got Drunk on Cake and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1967; The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1972; Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1975; Lovers of Their Time and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1978; Beyond the Pale and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1981; The News from Ireland and Other Stories copyright © William Trevor, 1986; and Family Sins and Other Stories, copyright © William Trevor, 1990.
The Day We Got Drunk on Cake, The Ballroom of Romance, Angels at the Ritz, Lovers of Their Time, and Beyond the Pale were first collected under the title The Stories of William Trevor in Penguin Books, 1983.
Page 1263 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.
(CIP data available)
ISBN 0-670-84129-3 (hc.)
ISBN 0 14 02.3245 1 (pbk.)
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978-0-14-192570-7
Contents
A Meeting in Middle Age
Access to the Children
The General’s Day
Memories of Youghal
The Table
A School Story
The Penthouse Apartment
In at the Birth
The Introspections of J.P. Powers
The Day We Got Drunk on Cake
Miss Smith
The Hotel of the Idle Moon
Nice Day at School
The Original Sins of Edward Tripp
The Forty-seventh Saturday
The Ballroom of Romance
A Happy Family
The Grass Widows
The Mark-2 Wife
An Evening with John Joe Dempsey
Kinkies
Going Home
A Choice of Butchers
O Fat White Woman
Raymond Bamber and Mrs Fitch
The Distant Past
In Isfahan
Angels at the Ritz
The Death of Peggy Meehan
Mrs Silly
A Complicated Nature
Teresa’s Wedding
Office Romances
Mr McNamara
Afternoon Dancing
Last Wishes
Mrs Acland’s Ghosts
Another Christmas
Broken Homes
Matilda’s England1. The Tennis Court2. The Summer-house3. The Drawing-room
Torridge
Death in Jerusalem
Lovers of Their Time
The Raising of Elvira Tremlett
Flights of Fancy
Attracta
A Dream of Butterflies
The Bedroom Eyes of Mrs Vansittart
Downstairs at Fitzgerald’s
Mulvihill’s Memorial
Beyond the Pale
The Blue Dress
The Teddy-bears’ Picnic
The Time of Year
Being Stolen From
Mr Tennyson
Autumn Sunshine
Sunday Drinks