The Selected Stories

This collection of her short fiction, brought to a new generation of readers, shows her to be a deft, lively, and gifted Catholic woman writer, whose work is deserving of renewed critical attention and re-evaluation.

This volume gathers together, for the first time, the remarkable short stories of Ann Scott-Moncrieff (1914-1943) – a writer whose early promise was cut short, but whose voice remains strikingly vivid and full of feeling. Praised by the poet and critic Edwin Muir for her ‘mind of great power and originality’, Scott-Moncrieff is best known for the popular children’s stories Aboard the Bulger (1935), The White Drake and Other Tales (1936), and Auntie Robbo (1941). Yet Scott-Moncrieff was also an important figure within the inter-war Scottish Literary Revival and was the author of short fiction for an adult market which was not anthologised during her lifetime. The stories collected here – many published for the first time since her death – reveal a writer of warmth, subtlety, and wry humour. Written with an ear for the richness of Scots speech and an eye for the landscapes of her native country, Scott-Moncrieff’s stories are characterised by playfulness, wit, and a deft exploration of the struggles and consolations of faith within the drama of everyday life. These short stories are, by turns, wry, ironical, hilarious, tragic, and full of a deep understanding of human experience