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    The Four Beauties
    The Four Beauties
    The Four Beauties
    Ebook189 pages2 hours

    The Four Beauties

    By H.E. Bates

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    About this ebook

    First published in 1968, The Four Beauties is Bates's last collection of novellas offering a mixture of comedy, adventure, a semi-autobiographical piece and an exploration of a dark love triangle.

    'The Simple Life' is set at a country cottage offering the joys of a humble existence, and focuses on a bitter alcoholic wife who finds temporary pleasure in a seventeen-year-old boy.

    A reminiscence of newspaper reporter, reflecting Bates's own experiences at the Northamptonshire Chronicle, 'The Four Beauties' concerns the narrator's complicated relationship with three lovely and highly-sexed daughters, as well as their mother. A television adaptation Country Matters was aired in March 1973.

    'The Chords of Youth' sees Bates revive the character of Aunt Leonora, first introduced in the 1965 story 'The Picnic', in this comic novella in which she entertains a visiting German, mistaking him for an old flame. Linguistic confusion, abundant food and wine, and a pompous English bureaucrat contribute to the humorous unfolding of the story.

    In contrasting tone, 'The White Wind' is a late novella featuring a young man coming to terms with life's realities, with considerable action and violence and an irascible man serving as the captain of a boat. The element of a dedicated doctor vainly trying to get Pacific islanders to take their medicines is based on Bates's own Tahitian travels.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateOct 6, 2016
    ISBN9781448215287
    The Four Beauties
    Author

    H.E. Bates

    H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside. His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed. During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym 'Flying Officer X'. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954). His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success. Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed. H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.

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      The Four Beauties - H.E. Bates

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