Pritchett, Sir Victor Sawdon

▪ 1998

      , British writer (b. Dec. 16, 1900, Ipswich, Suffolk, Eng.—d. March 20, 1997, London, Eng.), was especially appreciated for his dozens of short stories, though for some six decades he also wrote prolifically in a number of other genres—novels, essays, travelogues, biographies, and literary criticism. His powers of observation inspired stories that examined people leading ordinary lives and revealed their uniqueness, their aspirations, and the extraordinary circumstances in which they often found themselves. Pritchett's family was not well-off, and as he recounted in his first volume of autobiography, A Cab at the Door (1968), his father's business failures caused them to move frequently around the London area to stay ahead of creditors. His education was therefore haphazard, though he read voraciously and had an aptitude for languages. When Pritchett was 15, he had to leave school and take a clerical job, but when he was 20, he moved to Paris. He worked there at a variety of jobs, traveled, and began writing. The Christian Science Monitor published some of his essays and then hired him as a foreign correspondent, sending him first to Ireland and then to Spain, which caught his imagination—Pritchett's first book, Marching Spain (1928), recounted a walking trip, and his first book of short stories was The Spanish Virgin and Other Stories (1930). Returning to London, he became (1926) a literary critic for the New Statesman, an association that lasted some four decades. He also contributed to such periodicals as The Nation and The New Yorker. Pritchett's novels include Dead Man Leading (1937) and—his last and best-known— Mr. Beluncle (1951). His second volume of autobiography, Midnight Oil, was published in 1971. Among his books of essays are In My Good Books (1942), Books in General (1953), The Myth Makers (1979), and Complete Collected Essays (1997), and short stories were collected in such volumes as You Make Your Own Life (1938), When My Girl Comes Home (1961), and On the Edge of the Cliff (1979). The Complete Short Stories appeared in 1990. Pritchett was appointed C.B.E. in 1968 and knighted in 1975.

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