Fred Urquhart Collection – serie

Originally published in 1940, Fred Urquhart's first collection of short stories brings to life the modern Scotland of the 1930s, using his inimitably vivid dialogue. He shows the struggles of working-class women, whether labouring in a sweatshop, facing death in a tuberculosis hospital or seeking escape on a bike of her own. His male characters also have problems, caused by army life, religion or homosexuality in a period of oppression. Life is sometimes overshadowed by the approach of war. But there is comedy too, for example a fraught day at Glasgow's Empire Exhibition of 1938. And Urquhart looks beyond Scotland, with the story of a young American woman and her sailor, a sketch of an Italian soldier in the Spanish Civil War and a comic tale of a film director in Hell. Fred Urquhart (1912-1995) was born in Edinburgh and spent much of his childhood there, where his grandparents lived, and later he worked in an Edinburgh book shop for some years ('my university'). He is best known as a superb short story writer. When he began to write it was the heyday of short story magazines, and this was the only obvious way to earn a living as an author.He spent the war in the north-east of Scotland, a conscientious objector relegated to farm work: his stories of this are agreed to rival Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. But later he went to London, finding the louche world of Soho more to his taste than Edinburgh correctness. Later he lived in the country in a 'happy homosexual marriage' and he did not return to Scotland until 1991, after his partner's death. The Ferret Was Abraham's Daughter (1949) and Jezebel's Dust (1951) are his two great novels of Edinburgh's poorer citizens in wartime. Having admired Fred Urquhart's work for many years, Colin Affleck, a fellow native of Edinburgh, became a friend of his on his return to Scotland in 1991. Urquhart later appointed him as his literary executor. Among Dr Affleck's writings on Urquhart is a study focussing on his short stories, which appeared in British Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-1980 (edited by Dean Baldwin). Dr Affleck is now working on a biography of Urquhart.

The scene is Edinburgh, 1939. Lives are about to change. Blackout, bomb shelters, cinemas, dance halls, all call out to the girls and young women that life need not be dull. This book, set in one of the poorer areas, is full of the comedy and extraordinary dialogue for which Fred Urquhart is well known, and the Hipkiss family and its neighbours are foregrounded. But central is the imagination of young Bessie Hipkiss, aged fourteen, only just too old to be evacuated. Bessie's fantasy life as a princess of an exiled French Royal Family contrasts with the disappointing ordinariness of everyday, until she meets Lily McGillivray, only six months older, but already with peroxide and men on her mind. But when Bessie's mother dies her father expects her to raise the family. Life changes. Fred Urquhart (1912-1995) was born in Edinburgh and spent much of his childhood there, where his grandparents lived, and later he worked in an Edinburgh book shop for some years ('my university'). He is best known as a superb short story writer. When he began to write it was the heyday of short story magazines, and this was the only obvious way to earn a living as an author.He spent the war in the north-east of Scotland, a conscientious objector relegated to farm work: his stories of this are agreed to rival Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. But later he went to London, finding the louche world of Soho more to his taste than Edinburgh correctness. Later he lived in the country in a 'happy homosexual marriage' and he did not return to Scotland until 1991, after his partner's death. "The Ferret Was Abraham's Daughter" (1949) and "Jezebel's Dust" (1951) are his two great novels of Edinburgh's poorer citizens in wartime. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor in Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen. Recent publications include new editions of Naomi Mitchison and Jessie Kesson, and "Scottish Novels of the Second World War", which has chapters on them, on Urquhart, and Linklater, Jenkins, Spark, Hood and Mackay Brown, as well as a new edition of her biography, "Jessie Kesson: Writing Her Life."

Jezebel's Dust is the story of two young teenage girls infected by the love of uniforms in Edinburgh and London early in the war. They come from the slums and have no very high education or expectations, but the war is opening up new possibilities. Lily McGillivray is the chief man-eater and increasingly a 'good time girl'. She exploits and encourages her more passive and awkward friend Bessie Hipkiss, leading her astray with energy, as they meet up with sailors and soldiers, Free French, Polish and American. Ambition, sex, money and idleness are Lily's motivators. All the old standards are defied, and civilian life gradually becomes as dangerous as the military, in its own way. This is the novel Urquhart most wanted to have read by a new audience. Fred Urquhart (1912-1995) was born in Edinburgh and spent much of his childhood there, where his grandparents lived, and later he worked in an Edinburgh book shop for some years ('my university'). He is best known as a superb short story writer. When he began to write it was the heyday of short story magazines, and this was the only obvious way to earn a living as an author.He spent the war in the north-east of Scotland, a conscientious objector relegated to farm work: his stories of this are agreed to rival Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. But later he went to London, finding the louche world of Soho more to his taste than Edinburgh correctness. Later he lived in the country in a 'happy homosexual marriage' and he did not return to Scotland until 1991, after his partner's death. The Ferret Was Abraham's Daughter (1949) and Jezebel's Dust (1951) are his two great novels of Edinburgh's poorer citizens in wartime. Having admired Fred Urquhart's work for many years, Colin Affleck, a fellow native of Edinburgh, became a friend of his on his return to Scotland in 1991. Urquhart later appointed him as his literary executor. Among Dr Affleck's writings on Urquhart is a study focussing on his short stories, which appeared in "British Short-Fiction Writers, 1945-1980" (edited by Dean Baldwin). Dr Affleck is now working on a biography of Urquhart.

Fred Urquhart's lively collection of stories deals with life in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and demonstrates his fascination with American culture and its effect on Britain. The title story - a highly amusing satirical novella - presents a young Scotswoman who is desperate to cross the Atlantic as a war bride in order to get to Hollywood, armed with a tartan skirt and a copy of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Other stories portray an eccentric woman who has watched too many films, an American musician who has been luckless in his marriages, and an Edinburgh office where the typists have to cope with a predator. Urquhart takes us to London with a tale of an Aberdeenshire farmer's wife in search of fancy shoes and to occupied Germany, where a horse-loving soldier acquires a wife. In the final piece, two sophisticated women from London find life in the country too much for them. Throughout, Urquhart employs his sharp wit and his unique way with dialogue, creating a gallery of memorable characters.

By 1937, many people, both employed and unemployed, were anticipating war, but from 1939 they were all thrust into it. Fred Urquhart's second collection of short stories reflects this. The young men are often reluctant to sign up for the Forces: the world seems on the move. Tenement dwellers react to the mysteries of Blackout, sirens, air-raids, air-raid shelters. Urquhart's stories reflect all this in robust and often comic fashion. The longest, 'The Laundry Girl and the Pole', concerns one of his favourite subjects, the transformation that foreign soldiers could bring to local girls, relatively starved of freedom, in the exciting new Blackout. Wild nights in the chip shop! Language ceases to be the major problem. Sudden brief romances become the risky order of the day. red Urquhart (1912-1995) was born in Edinburgh and spent much of his childhood there, where his grandparents lived, and later he worked in an Edinburgh book shop for some years ('my university'). He is best known as a superb short story writer. When he began to write it was the heyday of short story magazines, and this was the only obvious way to earn a living as an author.He spent the war in the north-east of Scotland, a conscientious objector relegated to farm work: his stories of this are agreed to rival Grassic Gibbon and Jessie Kesson. But later he went to London, finding the louche world of Soho more to his taste than Edinburgh correctness. Later he lived in the country in a 'happy homosexual marriage' and he did not return to Scotland until 1991, after his partner's death. The Ferret Was Abraham's Daughter (1949) and Jezebel's Dust (1951) are his two great novels of Edinburgh's poorer citizens in wartime. sobel Murray is Emeritus Professor in Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen. Recent publications include new editions of Naomi Mitchison and Jessie Kesson, and Scottish Novels of the Second World War, which has chapters on them, on Urquhart, and Linklater, Jenkins, Spark, Hood and Mackay Brown, as well as a new edition of her biography, Jessie Kesson: Writing Her Life.

Highly praised by leading critics on its first publication this collection of some of Fred Urquhart's most subtle and skilful stories depicts the lives of a variety of Scottish characters, at home and abroad. He deals with social class and inter-generational conflict, aspirations and disasters, the passing of time and memories of the past. Urquhart displays his profound understanding of the dreams and behaviour of his predominantly female characters, whether it be an admirer of a great Scottish novelist, trying to discover the truth about her heroine, or a young woman encountering the horror of the Peninsular War; a middle-aged entertainer reminiscing while searching for her reprobate daughter in Paris or a woman fated to wander back and forth across the Atlantic. Comedy and tragedy intermingle in these stories, and throughout Urquhart displays his remarkable ability to make his creations speak in a totally convincing way.Highly praised by leading critics on its first publication this collection of some of Fred Urquhart's most subtle and skilful stories depicts the lives of a variety of Scottish characters, at home and abroad.He deals with social class and inter-generational conflict, aspirations and disasters, the passing of time and memories of the past. Urquhart displays his profound understanding of the dreams and behaviour of his predominantly female characters, whether it be an admirer of a great Scottish novelist, trying to discover the truth about her heroine, or a young woman encountering the horror of the Peninsular War; a middle-aged entertainer reminiscing while searching for her reprobate daughter in Paris or a woman fated to wander back and forth across the Atlantic. Comedy and tragedy intermingle in these stories, and throughout Urquhart displays his remarkable ability to make his creations speak in a totally convincing way.

This is the first publication of the last collection of his short stories that Fred Urquhart planned. It displays the full range of his work: unsparing stories, tragic and comic, about ordinary people in twentieth century Scotland; historical tales in settings from Bohemia to Dundee; and unconventional ghost stories with such disparate themes as the identity of the Third Murderer in Macbeth and goings-on in Lillie Langtry's household. As always, Urquhart the master storyteller excels in vivid dialogue and the creation of memorable characters, often placed in challenging circumstances. And in many of these stories he uses the freedom of the late twentieth century to explore various forms of sexuality with an enhanced frankness.

"The Year of the Short Corn" was first published in 1949, and the war, or its immediate aftermath, forms a presence in most of the stories. It can be a civilian family gathered together with scattered serving children for a precious Christmas leave, or a son or daughter returning from one of the services; it can illustrate clothes rationing, and the avid fervour with which civilian women greet silk stockings; it can be a 'townser' who thinks too much of himself who becomes snowbound on a North East farm, or the rage and humiliation of a young castrated ox. It can even be an Edinburgh boarding-house with a kenspeckle crew of lodgers (and an oversexed bulldog), under the eyes of a bewildered refugee girl from Vienna. Fred Urquhart was praised by George Orwell for the striking variety of his subject matter, and by others for his splendid dialogue, and his portraits of characters, especially women. None of these critics was wrong, but there is more here to praise!