A collection of seven short stories, from the master of regional
fiction, Phyllis Bentley. A native of Yorkshire, Bentley elegantly
captures the essence of a simple rural life in her words, while
expressing the lives, loves and difficulties of the people who live
there with a real sensitivity of emotion. These stories range from an
old feud in 1350 to the post-war coming of European refugees to the
Yorkshire mills. All the tales are founded on fact, but the motivation,
the cause, of these facts has remained unknown, or misunderstood,
through the centuries.
The awful betrayal, the highwayman's thefts, the fatal gift of a textile
design, the stubborn refusal of a right of way, the religious conflict,
the jealousy, the bitterness, are contained in these seven stories:
- Revenge upon revenge Isabella
- Isabella
- A West Riding love story
- No road
- A case of conscience
- Love and money
- You see
Phyllis Bentley, 1894--1977 Bentley published her first work in 1918, a
collection of short stories entitled The World's Bane, after which she
published several poor-selling novels. The publication in March 1932 of
her best-known work, Inheritance, set against the background of the
development of the textile industry in the West Riding, received
widespread critical acclaim and ran through twenty-three impressions by
1946, making her the first successful English regional novelist since
Thomas Hardy and his Wessex. In 1949 she was awarded an honorary DLitt
from Leeds University; in 1958 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society
of Literature; and in 1970 was awarded an OBE.
