Here are Ladies

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Pages: 148

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About this book

James Stephens brings together stories and poems about marriage, attraction, and the odd arguments people use to explain themselves. The collection opens with the poem “Women,” then turns to “Three Heavy Husbands,” where a wealthy stockbroker expects his wife to share his preferences and surrender her independence. Her separate likes and dislikes disturb that ambition. When influenza keeps him away from work, a clerk arrives to handle correspondence and becomes drawn to his wife.

Elsewhere, a traveller frets about becoming fat and bald, finding comfort in the thought that kings and generals lose their hair too. His attention shifts from a confident young man and a girl to a grocery cart driver who keeps flicking a whip at a steady horse without showing anger. Such observations give the pieces their comic edge: private worries and ordinary gestures expose the distance between what people think and how they behave.

About the author

James Stephens

James Stephens (1880-1950) was an Irish poet and novelist central to the Irish Literary Revival. Largely self-taught, he won fame with The Crock of Gold and Irish Fairy Tales, retelling old Gaelic myth in his own voice. A friend of James Joyce, he also wrote lyric poetry and later broadcast for the BBC.