A. E. Coppard was born into poverty in Kent, and after a mostly self-education and a variety of jobs, which included sprinting professionally, he moved to Oxford to work at the Eagle Ironworks. He saved enough from his wages and his running to give up work and rent a cottage in rural Oxfordshire (Headington!) aiming to become recognised as a writer. He sold short stories quite quickly to good magazines and eventually, 14 years after moving here, he published his first collection of stories, which was a critical success and was reprinted several times. He was popular in the 1920s but is not well-known today, despite some of his work being televised in the 1970s.
Weep Not My Wanton (Turnpike, £8) is a slim ‘best-of’ A E Coppard, containing his seven finest stories. The stories are all of a rural nature, with memorable descriptions of the English landscape which he couples to believably moving characters who find themselves in interesting situations. The world he portrays in these well-crafted tales is all long gone: it’s probably fair to say that it may not even have been around when he was writing about it. Nevertheless, his stories are a highly evocative delight, and well worth reading.
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