Dusky Ruth & Other Stories

A.E. Coppard
Penguin

Beyond that woeful 1970's soft porn image that (dis)graces the cover this is another delightful collection of gently bucolic and occasionally supernatural tales from the pen of a master.

I've read more than a few of these stories before in the modern collection I reviewed here the other year such as the lovely title piece, the gently strange 'Adam & Eve & Pinch Me', the devious humanity of 'Weep Not My Wanton' and the gossipy comraderie of 'The Field of Mustard'.  Betyond those are other treasures such as the fairytale of 'The Bogey Man', the delicate familial love displayed in 'The Cherry Tree', the love story of 'Polly Morgan' and many more.

Coppard was a true master of the short story.  Few of the stories in his collections are particarly weird or supernatural but I recommend them unreservedly to devotees of both as he was blessed with an imagination imbued with a pastoral fecundity that allowed it to roam paths trod and untrod through the countryside that fueled it.

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Weep Not My Wanton: Selected Short Stories

A.E. Coppard
Turnpike Books

A.E. Coppards short stories capture a sensual rural England combining poetic description of its landscape with characters tied to a more elemental life, who experience passions of love, loss and regret. Drawing on traditional folklore and ballads, at a time when the countryside s traditional culture was dying out, Coppards stories have a uniquely melancholic tone, an understanding of human nature and the secret desires of women with an individual vision of England.

Until a month or so ago I'd never heard of Coppard and then along came Mark Valentine's newest collection essays extolling the quiet joys of those authors who have fallen by the wayside and those never quite found the path in the first place.  There was much in the book that intrigued but none more so than A.E. Coppard.  Mark's description was just so enticing that I put in a quick order for the only currently available collection of Coppard's work.

Coppard was apparently much admired by, amongst others, Algernon Blackwood and the stories in this collection show they shared an imagination defined by landscape but for Coppard this is governed by an arcadian vision of life.  His stories tell of a deep understanding of the quirks and foibles of humanity and celebrate their interactions and their comunications without ever feeling the need to judge or moralise.  They are elegantly formed and display a real mastery of the short story form.

On the whole I must admit to not being as entirely smitten with the book as I'd hoped to be.  The stories are beautifully written and enjoyable enough but the ones featured here aren't really entirely to my taste being for the most part bereft of the oddities I look for in a book. I know though that he had a bit of a penchant for the strange and the one truly weird tale here, 'Adam and Eve and Pinch Me', with its wandering spirit along with the strength of his writing has me positively craving for a copy of a collection of his stranger stories.

Buy it here - Weep Not My Wanton: Selected Short Stories

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain