Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates
Author's Note
The Innocents Abroad
Maggie Meriwether's Rich Experience
The Children's Game
The Echo and the Nemesis
The Maiden
A Modest Proposal
Caveat Emptor
The Bostonians, and Other Manifestations of the American Scene
Life Is No Abyss
The Hope Chest
Polite Conversation
A Country Love Story
The Bleeding Heart
The Lippia Lawn
The Interior Castle
Cowboys and Indians, and Magic Mountains
The Healthiest Girl in Town
The Tea Time of Stouthearted Ladies
The Mountain Day
The Darkening Moon
Bad Characters
In the Zoo
The Liberation
A Reading Problem
A Summer Day
The Philosophy Lesson
Manhattan Island
Children Are Bored on Sunday
Beatrice Trueblood's Story
Between the Porch and the Altar
I Love Someone
Cops and Robbers
The Captain's Gift
The End of a Career
An Influx of Poets

These Pulitzer Prize-winning stories represent the major short works of fiction by one of the most distinctively American stylists of her day. Jean Stafford communicates the small details of loneliness and connection, the search for freedom and the desire to belong, that not only illuminate whole lives but also convey with an elegant economy of words the sense of the place and time in which her protagonists find themselves. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford includes the acclaimed story "An Influx of Poets," which has never before appeared in book form.

Jean Stafford; Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates