Chapman & Hall published Mary Butts’ first book
Speed the Plough and other Storiesin 1923. The volume included nine stories: “Speed the Plough”, “In Bayswater”, “The Saint”, “Bellerophon to Anteia”, “Angèle au Couvent”, “In the Street”, “The Golden Bough”, “In the South” and “Madonna of the Magnificat” (Blondel, 1997, 126). In its advertising blurb, Chapman & Hall declared thus: “It is not everyone’s book; no book that is worth anything is. It is modern both in its choice of subject and in its style. But it is a style that is as much a part of twentieth-century civilisation as the telephone and typewriter” (qtd. in Blondel, 1998, 125-6). It was not a book for the 1923
Observer, which judged the “style of the stories” to be “awkward,…
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Citation: Radford, Andrew. "Speed the Plough and Other Stories". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 September 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39188, accessed 16 October 2024.]
