The first time Elizabeth Taylor's acclaimed short stories have been collected in one volume, and its publication marks the centenary of Elizabeth Taylor's birth.

Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: one of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. -- Sarah Waters Taylor has remarkable skill. In all the stories there is a peculiarly satisfying mixture of wit and generosity. Their human depth is such that they can be read again and again. -- Margaret Drabble The missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike. -- David Baddiel

Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75) is increasingly being recognised as one of the best writers of the twentieth century. She wrote her first book, At Mrs Lippincote's, during the war, and this was followed by eleven further novels and a children's book, Mossy Trotter. Her short stories appeared in Vogue, the New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar. Rosamond Lehmann considered her writing 'sophisticated, sensitive and brilliantly amusing, with a kind of stripped, piercing feminine wit', and Kingsley Amis regarded her as 'one of the best English novelists born in this century'.