Margaret Drabble is one of the major literary figures of her generation. This is a new collection, in which she presents her complete short fiction for the first time in a single volume. A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman shows her to be a leading practitioner of the art of the short story.
Taken as a whole, the stories reflect the social changes of the past forty years, by showing the English at home and abroad. Their protagonists are men and women, husbands and lovers, television presenters and housewives, all subtly and precisely captured as products of their time and place.