The First Wife and other stories [antikvár]

PREFACE Although by nature and choice a novelist above all else, Pearl S. Buck has written a great many shorter pieces. No one has been aware of the number and variety of these. Even the author herself had forgottén two or three which have been brought to light by earnest search, and it is by no means sure that somé do not remain hidden still. For many of these writings have been in the true sense fugitive. The earliest was more than ten years ago. Several that rank with her best work came before her name had been widely noticed. Even to-day she is often to be found in obscure corners of the strange wide realm of print. If a topic is of concern to her she will write about it, in the place that seems to her most fitting, without thought of the payment or of prestige. Her fame as a novelist has tended to draw attention away from her short stories of distinguished quality written both before and since her books were published. The present book brings together her short fiction, omitting one story not set in the Chinese scene, and omitting alsó certain sketches that lie on the bordér between fact and fiction, a bordér which in her field is more than usually dim and hard to fix. The stories in the first group for the most part teli of the clash between the old and the new, between the firm traditions of the East and the urgent ideas of the