The Key to My Heart: A Comedy in Three Parts is a collection of three works of short fiction by V. S. Pritchett, first published by Chatto House in 1963 and repackaged as a novel by Random House in 1964.Stinson, 1992 p. 136: Bibliography, Collections.Crews, 1964: "...V.S. Pritchett's novella..." The stories originally appeared in The New Yorker.Stinson, 1992 p. 46: "the dust jacket refers to the book as a novel..." And: The New Yorker info. The first of the stories, "The Key to My Heart", was selected by the BBC for radio dramatization in 1971.Treglown, 2004 p. 226
Stories "The Key to My Heart" The New Yorker, July 18, 1959 "Noisy Flushes the Bird's" The New Yorker, September 23, 1961 "Noisy in the Doghouse" The New Yorker, November 10, 1962
Background The Key to My Heart draws from Pritchett's family and community life while residing at Stokke Manor in the Savernake Forest, as well as an examination of "the effects of class consciousness on English behavior."Treglown, 2004 p. 187: The Key to My Heart "drew directly on the life he and Dorothy had recently left behind at Stokke..." p. 187: See here for quote. And p. 146
Contemporary reviews
Critic Frederick C. Crews, writing in the New York Times Book Review, offers a thumb-nail synopsis-analysis of the story:
Crews surmises that the novel's title, reminiscent of the fiction from the period of Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson (1911), is a measure of Pritchett's "indifference to the charge of sounding old-fashioned." He asks rhetorically "whether this pleasant and breezy tale has any serious claim to our interest." Novelist Brigid Brophy in the New Statesman "dismissed" the cast of characters in the novel as resembling "the quaintness of people in Happy families" playing cards. The comedic narrative, she wrote, "was of the Ealing Studios kind."Treglown, 2004 p. 212: Quoted in Treglown, from the October 25, 1963 New Statesman article. See note 37, p. 288
Retrospective appraisal Literary critic John J. Stinson bestows high praise on The Key to My Heart:
American literary critic Edmund Wilson considered the collection "a comic masterpiece as well as an acute tableau de moeurs."Treglown, 2004 p. 187: Quoted in Treglown, from a personal communication from Wilson to VSP, April 19, 1965: see note 49, p. 285
Biographer Jeremy Treglown regards these stories as a brief falling off in the quality of Pritchett's fiction: "The work Pritchett did in the mid-1960s was never without confidence or panache...but not until 1968-69 did his fiction begin to return to form."Treglown, 2004 p. 212: Ellipsis contains a sentence that Treglown offers as panache-like. And: " His travels, too, had lost some of their zest."
Prtichett, in a 1985 interview with John Haffenden, remarked:
Footnotes
Sources Crews, Frederick C. 1964. "Comedy and Beyond." New York Times Book Review, December 3, 1964. Comedy and Beyond Accessed 10 October 2024. Haffenden, John. 1985. "V. S. Pritchett," Novelists in Interview. Routledge, Kenan & Paul, London. Stinson, John J. 1992. V. S. Pritchett: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers, New York. Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Treglown, Jeremy. 2004. V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life. Pimlico, Random House, London. (paperback). Pritchett, V. S. 1963. The Key to My Heart. Chatto House London. Pritchett, V. S. 1964. The Key to My Heart and Other Stories Random House, New York.