The Pritchett Century: A Selection of the Best by V. S. Pritchett Paperback - 1998

First line

Since my boyhood I have been vain of being born just before the end of 1900 and at every birthday thinking of myself as pretty well as old as the century.

Media reviews

"A rich, comfortably large anthology of work by one of the most versatile and consistently satisfying writers
of the century." --The New York Times Book Review
"This volume is a delight." --Publishers Weekly
"Spark[s] with energy." --Times Literary Supplement

In a life that spanned almost the entire course of the twentieth century (he was born in 1900 and died in 1997), Sir Victor Pritchett mastered nearly every form of literature--Newsweek said he was "one of the last true men of letters." Sir Victor's son Oliver has made selections from each of his father's disciplines to illustrate the tremendous scope of his brilliance. Included in this volume are sections of Pritchett's memoirs, A Cab at the Door and Midnight Oil; his reflections on turning eighty; and an account of a visit to the Appalachians written in 1925. There are also portraits of Dublin, New York, the Amazon, and Spain; selections from the novels Dead Man Leading and Mr. Beluncle; thirteen complete short stories; excerpts from biographies of Turgenev and Chekhov; and critical pieces on Twain, Scott, Dickens, Eliot, Henry James, Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, and Salman Rushdie.
With Oliver Pritchett's appreciation of his father and John Bayley's "In Memoriam," The Pritchett Century stands as the most comprehensive collection of Sir Victor's work available in one volume.