H. E. Bates

The Complete Uncle Silas Stories (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Bates's famous loveable rogue, Uncle Silas, has a unique range of work to his name. For the first time, all of these stories are gathered together in one collection, allowing readers to experience Silas from multiple perspectives.

Some tales offer sly, affectionate glimpses of the narrator's great-uncle Silas - the rural oldster of the earthy, boozy, incorrigible school. But there is also an active tenderness as seen in 'The Revelation,' where the narrator watches old Silas being given a bath by his surly, long-time housekeeper - and realises that their relationship is intensely romantic.

In 'The Lily', in a voice at once dreamy, devilish, innocent, mysterious and triumphant, 93-year-old Silas recalls his more youthful days of poaching and wooing. Elsewhere, in 'A Funny Thing' Silas chortles over tall tales of his Casanova days, trying to out-lie his dandyish, equally ancient brother-in-law, Cosmo.

There are nostalgic vignettes of roof-thatching, pig-wrestling, and grave-digging. Bates claims some of the stories to be "so near to reality that they needed only the slightest recolouring on my part", citing 'The Wedding,' 'The Revelation,' 'Silas the Good,' and 'The Death of Uncle Silas'. It is in these examples that we see how he was inspired by that "apocryphal legend" borne of "every country child who keeps his ears cocked when men are talking." Silas shrewdly and gently opens the eyes of his young listener to the adult world.
V.S. Pritchett acknowledged Bates's gift in the short story genre, finding that he avoided farce with Silas through the use of the "passive, wondering audience" of the boy and the fidelity of style to the "techniques of rural story-telling...Uncle Silas is in fact the scandalizing village memory at work."

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 1
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. April 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781448215324
• Artikelnr.: 44867404

Autorenporträt

H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.

His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed. During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X'. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954).

His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success. Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.

H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.