Man who Understood Women, and Other Stories

Leonard Merrick was once among the most celebrated English writers of his era, praised by contemporaries for his peerless command of narrative form. This collection of twenty stories showcases exactly why William Dean Howells considered him unmatched in 'shapeliness.' The title story alone, 'The Man Who Understood Women,' offers a delicious portrait of male confidence meeting its match, a comedy of errors where a self-proclaimed expert in the fairer sex finds himself utterly confounded. Throughout, Merrick turns his gimlet eye on the theatres, drawing rooms, and modest ambitions of Edwardian England, capturing the small mortifications and quiet heroics of ordinary life with precision that never slips into cruelty. These are stories that understand people, their vanities and their tender absurdities. A century of neglect has obscured Merrick's considerable gifts, but this collection offers a rare chance to discover a writer whose craft was once deemed indispensable. For readers who cherish the short fiction of Henry James, Maugham, or Wharton, these stories promise the same discerning pleasures: wit that cuts, sentiment that never becomes saccharine, and prose that rewards attention.