Fiction

Helen

An Englishman whose family has lived in India for four generations, JOHN MASTERSwas born in Calcutta and observed the family tradition by serving for fourteen years in the British Army, in the course of which he was awarded the DSO. In 1948 he moved to this country and made his first appearance in the Atlantic — “a success,”he says, “which encouraged me to persevere.”With his first novel, Nightrunners of Bengal, he took command of a large audience, and each new book thereafter has added to his reputation and his popularity. Bhowani Junction was selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club last year, and his fifth book, Coromandel, will appear in March.

The Surplus Bride: A Story

Of Women

A short story

A Head for a Head

Works Manager of an aircraft factory in northeast London at a spot where Jerry dumped most of his scrap iron, GERARD NEWTON made a determined bid for quiet at the end of World War II. He bought a cottage in the New Forest, and there settled down to keep a garden and write books about it. Thus far he has published four books on gardening — two of them about dahlias — and with this encouragement he has begun to branch out into fiction.

Candle Salad

A graduate of Exeter and Harvard, RICHARD BISSELL knows our inland waterways — the Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi (on all of which he holds a pilot’s license) — as well as Mark Twain knew them. From this river experience came the source material for his first novel, A Stretch on the River; his second, if 7½ Cents, the story of a strike in a pajama factory, was converted into a highly successful musical comedy, The Pajama Game; and his third, High Water, made its debut in September under the Atlantic-Little, Brown imprint.

The Finest Pipe Maker in Russia

A Londoner who cherishes every vestige of the cockney, WOLF MANKOWITZ graduated from Cambridge University and within six years established himself as one of the leading dealers in Wedgwoad. Now in his late twenties, he writes as he pleases, dividing his time between anthovitative studies of the Portland vase, plays for the London theater, and fiction. His two latest novels, Make Me an Offer and A Kid for Two Farthings, are being filmed. In the months ahead we shall publish a series of his short stories, of which this is the first.

The Fairy Fire

A graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge, T. H. WHITE published his first novel, Loved Helen, in 1926 when he was a young schoolmaster at Stowe. He scored his first major success in this country with The Sword in the Stone; and then, when he had resumed writing after the war, he again hit the target of the Book-of-the-Month Club with his novel, Mistress Masham’s Repose. In Who’s Who he gives as his recreation “Animals"; and one will see why after reading the story which follows.

The Ten-Dollar Bill

A student of economics now working towards his doctorate, RICHARD T. GILL is a Harvard graduate who finds the atmosphere of Cambridge conducive also to the writing of short stories. He has enjoyed the stimulus of working under Archibald MacLeish and Frank O’Connor, the Irish storyteller, and for the past two summers has been assisting Mr. O’Connor in his short story course at the Harvard Summer School. Mr. Gill’s first story, The Secret,” was published in the April Atlantic.

The Tram

FRANK O’CONNOR, the Irish author who has been giving courses at the Harvard Summer School on the writing of fiction, was ashed how he approached his own short stories. Said Mr. O’Connor, “ With me it’s a difficulty of temperament. Mine is lyrical, explosive. I write a story with a feeling of slight regret for poor Shakespeare’s lack of talent and wake up with a hangover that makes poteen look like cold water, Then, having cursed life and forsworn literature, I start rewriting. If I can work up the Shakespeare mood often enough I may get it right in six revisions. If I don’t I may have to rewrite it fifty times. This isn’t exaggerationThe story which follows is one of a new collection, More Stories, to be published this month by Knopf.