Forms of Chaos

In 1965, Doris Lessing and her publisher at that time (Simon and Schuster) culled out of her previous collections of short stories those that were set in Africa and came up with African Stories. Thirteen years later, Lessing and Knopf have gathered the rest into Stories. All that remains to be done is to issue a second edition of African Stories that will include three that were published in Lessing’s 1972 collection, The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories. And then we will have Doris Lessing’s complete short stories, all 68 of them, in two volumes.

But why in two? Because a single volume would be unwieldy? Possibly. Well then, why not Collected Stories in two volumes? Why this division?

ER

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Ellen Cronan Rose

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In 1965, Doris Lessing and her publisher at that time (Simon and Schuster) culled out of her previous collections of short stories those that were set in Africa and came up with African Stories. Thirteen years later, Lessing and Knopf have gathered the rest into Stories. All that remains to be done is to issue a second edition of African Stories that will include three that were published in Lessing’s 1972 collection, The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other Stories. And then we will have Doris Lessing’s complete short stories, all 68 of them, in two volumes.

But why in two? Because a single volume would be unwieldy? Possibly. Well then, why not Collected Stories in two volumes? Why this division?