The Daffodil Sky (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Baldwin, Dean R. H. E. Bates: A Literary Life, Susquehanna University Press, 1987.

  A full- length study of Bates’s life containing commentary on many of Bates’s works, including the collection The Daffodil Sky.

• Baldwin, Dean R. “Atmosphere in the Stories of H. E. Bates,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 21, 1984, pp. 215-22.

  Comments on the manner in which Bates develops atmosphere in his stories and notes that the atmosphere in many of Bates’s works clearly distinguishes them from those of his contemporaries.

• Fuller, Edmund. “Impressions of Mortality,” in The New York Times Book Review, July 15, 1956, p. 5.

  A review of the first American edition of the collection The Daffodil Sky, published in 1956, that focuses on Bates’s tendency to express ideas in an indirect manner.

• Gindin, James. “A. E. Coppard and H. E. Bates,” in The English Short Story, 1880-1945, edited by Joseph M. Flora, Twayne, 1985, pp. 113-41.

  Argues that Bates’s short stories emphasize the plain and ordinary over settings and characters, prefer “country matters” for their subjects, and shun metaphor and symbolism in favor of direct representation of characters and events.

• Hughes, Douglas A. “The Eclipsing of V. S. Pritchett and H. E. Bates: A Representative Case of Critical Myopia,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 19, 1982, pp. iii-v.

  Observes that Bates’s works have not received the attention they deserve and argues that editors of scholarly journals should encourage studies on under-represented authors such as Bates.

• Vannatta, Dennis. H. E. Bates, Twayne, 1983.

  A study of Bates’s work and life that contains a useful bibliography of primary and secondary sources and discusses the themes, plots, and characterization in some of the stories in The Daffodil Sky.

• Vannatta, Dennis, ed. The English Short Story, 1945-1980, Twayne, 1985.

  The three essays in this collection which cover the years 1945-1970 mention Bates numerous times and cite his short stories as being amongst the most significant examples of the genre produced in post-World War II England.

• Wilson, Angus. A review of The Daffodil Sky, in The New Statesman and Nation, November 19, 1955.

  An early review of The Daffodil Sky that praises Bates for the wide range of his stories and faults him for being too sentimental in some of them.