The Woman Who Had Imagination

The Woman Who Had Imagination, H.E. Bates’s fourth volume of stories, first published in 1934 (Jonathan Cape), is a fascinating collection of contrasts. The stories combine elements of realism and poetry, beauty and ugliness, tenderness and irony. Graham Greene, writing in the Spectator, lauded the collection as “the first volume of Mr. Bates’s maturity” and Bates as “an artist of magnificent originality with a vitality quite unsuspected hitherto.”

This is brilliantly demonstrated in the title story, “The Woman Who Had Imagination,” the heart-rending story of an Italian woman, revealed through the casual meetings and conversations that take place on a day’s outing of a country choir.
The contrast between “The Waterfall,” with its melancholy and grace, and the disturbing tensions in “The Brothers.” emphasizes Bates’s mastery of both the delicate and the disquieting. It is also in this collection that we are introduced to the much-loved comic narrator, Uncle Silas, in “The Lily,” “The Wedding.” and “Death of Uncle Silas.”

In addition to the original collection this edition includes two extra stories. “The Country Doctor” concerns a woman’s grief on the death of her dearest friend. It was first published in the Fortnightly Review in 1931 with the title “The Country Sale,” and later in the limited edition The Story Without an End and The Country Doctor (White Owl Press, 1932), and has not been reprinted since.

“The Parrot” chronicles a man, a marriage and the eponymous parrot, and has only previously been published in 1928 in T.P.’s Weekly, founded by the radical MP, T.P. O’Connor.

H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.
His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed. During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym “Flying Officer X”. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954). His most popular creation was the Larkin family, featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success. Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed. H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children, and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.