The short story form is a difficult one to master, especially for a propagandist and satirist. But this is its advantage for seeing Lewis entire. For it evokes the more imaginative areas of his writing, and excises that moralising and, tendentiousness of which he is capable. Although Lewis did not see life whole, he saw it clearly and steadily; Unlucky For Pringle is a surprisingly fine book.

Lewis had an eye for the dotty and the deranged from the beginning of his writing, and it is simply his analysis of their moral condition which changes. The progress of his writing never did run smooth, and his position as both moralist and imaginative writer becomes more and more difficult to sustain. In the stories of the 1950s which are reprinted in this volume, the prose has become a heavier thing. Lewis comes to dwell more and more upon mental and moral deformity, on what is unlucky or odd.