The Daffodil Sky

London: Michael Joseph, 1955 (October); Boston: Little, Brown and Company (an Atlantic Monthly Press Book), 1956. 256 pp.
Dedication: "To Sir Louis Sterling [a patron who purchased Bates's literary manuscripts]."

Fifteen short stories written between 1952 and 1955 and ranging from portraits of the English in foreign lands to poetic treatments of rural life in Bates's Northamptonshire. Bates included nine of the stories in his 1963 collection Seven by Five/The Best of H.E. Bates, evidence of his own high opinion of the collection. The Times comments that "there is no better writer of straightforward short stories...Mr. Bates writes simply; his instinct is a deep compassion." The Times Literary Supplement says that "the pleasure one gets from most of the fifteen stories in his new collection...springs from the fact that in them Mr. Bates has returned to the manner of his early books."

Reviews:

• Saturday Review of Literature (July 14, 1956, p. 10, William Peden, attached)
• Spectator (October 28, 1955, p. 582, Walter Clemons, attached)
• Times (October 20, 1955, p. 13, attached)
• Times Literary Supplement (November 11, 1955, p. 669, Julian Symons, attached)

Contains: The Good Corn; The Daffodil Sky; Country Society; Across the Bay; Elaine; The Maker of Coffins; The Treasure Game; Chaff in the Wind; The Small Portion; The Common Denominator; A Place in The Heart; The Evolution of Saxby; Roman Figures; Go, Lovely Rose; Third View on the Reichenbach.