The British and Irish Short Story Handbook guides readers through the development of the short story and the unique critical issues involved in discussions of short fiction. It includes a wide-ranging analysis of non-canonical and non-realist writers as well as the major authors and their works, providing a comprehensive and much-needed appraisal of this area.
David Malcolm is Professor of English Literature at the University of Gdask. He is co-author (with Cheryl Alexander Malcolm) of Jean Rhys: A Study of the Short Fiction (1996), and author of Understanding Ian McEwan (2002), Understanding Graham Swift (2003) and Understanding John McGahern (2007). He is co-editor (with Cheryl Alexander Malcolm) of British and Irish Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-2000, Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 319 (2006) and A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
"Overall, The British and Irish Short Story Handbook will be a useful tool in the teaching of the short story at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Further, for scholars new to the field of short story criticism it is an accessible yet well-informed entry point. With the range of resources it offers and the succinct summaries it provides of key issues, topics and debates it collates some of the central tenets of the field. I am sure it will set people off on a fruitful journey into the ever-developing field of the British and Irish short story and short story criticism." (Irish Studies Review, 21 November 2013)
"The British and Irish Short Story Handbook is an excellent introduction to the short story as a literary form, but is of greater interest to the student than to a general reader, and my reservations on the entry on Warner should not detract from the fact that her inclusion in it draws her closer to mainstream literary fiction as it is taught in schools and universities. And for that we should be grateful." (Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, 1 February 2013)
"Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and general readers." (Choice, 1 November 2012)