Market Town Research Articles

The provision of public education – a hospice's journey

The End of Life Care Strategy highlighted the importance of public education and the Dying Matters coalition was created to encourage people to talk about dying. This describes the experience...

Interpreting Seventeenth-Century Probate Documents: John Carter, Master Carpenter in St Albans

This is a study of a successful seventeenth-century carpenter in St Albans, John Carter, using probate and other documents, assisted by a large-scale computer database of St Albans residents of the period. Sections of the article cover his family, his work and his house and its contents, which have been reconstructed from his probate inventory and from knowledge of the structure of other local houses of the period. Carter's social standing is discussed, both in its local context and in relation to previous probate inventory analyses. This micro-study sheds unusual light upon aspects of the life of a 'middling sort' of person, living in a thriving market town in close proximity to London, at the beginning of the consumer age.

What is Important to Me Is My Business, Nothing More: Neoliberalism, Ideology and the Work of Selling in Highland Bolivia

Marketplace vendors in the market town of Challapata, Oruro, Bolivia articulate an ideology that resembles that of neoliberalism. Entrepreneurial, competitive, and focused on their individual and immediate family concerns they have little interest in their local and national vendor organizations. Most vendors state that their priorities are those of their business and the profits they earn. This parallel with the basic tenets of neoliberalism is not simply the outcome of an explicit promotion of neoliberal ideologies in Bolivia. I argue that in order to understand vendors' political and social outlook on life we need to explore the work of selling, the relationships such work entails and the broader political economic context in which selling takes place. The data and analysis I present suggest that in examining the politics of groups of people subordinated by neoliberal economic processes we need to consider how these processes generate consensus as well as protest and resistance.

Város–tanya-kapcsolat a Horthy-kori Kecskeméten

Hasonlóan a társadalomtörténethez, a történeti földrajz is jelentős változásokon megy keresztül napjainkban. Az utóbbi diszciplína megújulás közben – úgy tűnik – a korábbihoz képest lényegesen szorosabbra fűzi szálait a történettudománnyal. A történeti földrajzosok ezért kutatásaik során többek között egyre inkább arra törekednek határainkon túl, hogy visszatérjenek az elsődleges (például a levéltári) forrásokhoz. Jelen munka pusztán szerény kísérlet kíván lenni ebben a sorban. Arra keres válaszokat, hogy a történettudomány régi és új módszereivel miként lehet újraszólaltatni egy rég elfeledett, ám társadalomtörténeti szempontból annál lényegesebb témát: a két világháború közötti város–tanya-kapcsolatot (Kecskemét példáján).

Gender, fear of crime, and self-presentation: an experimental investigation

The authors investigate gendered norms associated with the fear of crime. A sample of 100 men and women in a British market town completed a fear of crime survey having been instructed either to be ‘totally honest and accurate’, or to respond in a way that portrays them ‘in the best possible light’ (‘fake good’). Men asked to ‘fake good’ reported less fear than men asked to respond honestly. This result is consistent with theories of masculinity that emphasize the importance of emotional invulnerability and self-sufficiency. In contrast, women asked to ‘fake good’ tended to report more fear than those asked to respond honestly. This result extends theories of how fear of crime curtails women's freedoms. Specifically, the fear of crime may be a prescriptive gendered norm in its own right, causing women (and men) to feel that their expressed fear is a yardstick by which they might be judged.

LIVING BY DESIGN: C. R. ASHBEE'S GUILD OF HANDICRAFT AND TWO ENGLISH TOLSTOYAN COMMUNITIES, 1897–1907

Shortly before C. R. Ashbee transplanted a hundred and fifty Cockneys to Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, in 1902 to form a utopian arts-and-crafts community, two other back-to-the-land settlements were also established, one located outside the market town of Stroud, a mere bicycle ride away from Ashbee and his guild. These Tolstoyan colonies – Purleigh, founded in 1896 in Essex, and Whiteway, founded in 1898 in the Cotswolds – fostered goals of fellowship and the simplification of life, as had been modeled by Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman in the United States and Edward Carpenter in Britain. Yet, whereas Ashbee was inspired by the model of William Morris and nostalgia for a pre-industrial England, English Tolstoyans looked not to craft, but to a less Aesthetic “bread labor” as a respite from modernity's corruption. Visiting Whiteway in 1904, Ashbee observed the Tolstoyans’ struggles to live off the land and commented, “they hold the other end of the stick we are ourselves shaping at Campden” (qtd. in MacCarthy 100). As his metaphor implied, both groups shared utopian aspirations, but Whiteway's settlers had sought the perfection of life from another vantage point and through other means. Ashbee regarded the austerity of their lives with distance and, as we will see, even with some distaste. Nevertheless, some features of the guildsmen's lifestyle at Chipping Campden mirrored those at Whiteway. This essay uses memoirs and fictions by C. R. Ashbee, his spouse, Janet Ashbee, and the Tolstoyans to disentangle the threads of “Aestheticism” and “simplification,” and to mark places of their conflation.

Birth of a market town in Tanzania: towards narrative studies of urban Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa's social science literature has primarily focused on phenomena within the rural village context. Urban analysis is currently gaining momentum with concentration on the continent's capital cities, and in particular the mega cities of Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. Urban settlements of more modest size and political importance have received scant attention. This article explores the urban growth dynamics of Katoro, a rapidly expanding small town in Tanzania's northwest mining frontier. Tracing Katoro's early origins and its growth as a regional trading centre with respect to design, natural resource utilization and service development, it is argued that the transition from rural to urban settlement is far from accidental. The practical concerns and cosmopolitan vision of the settlement's leading early settlers set Katoro on a trajectory of demographic expansion and economic growth through successive stages of Tanzanian socialist and neo-liberalist policies. Responding to the opportunities afforded by regional gold mining and international border trade, longstanding residents and recent migrants created a thriving centre for the provision of trade and services that had “boom” characteristics distinct from gold strike settlements in the surrounding area. Katoro's success must be seen in scalar terms, and raises issues about analytical biases in African urban studies. Current literature dramatizing the unpredictability and chaos of urban life in Africa's mega cities has taken centre stage, leaving the dynamics of smaller urban settlements, foundational to the future of urban Africa largely ignored. This article seeks to address the literature's scalar imbalance and draw attention to the meso level between individual livelihood activities and macro economic urban performance.

Sylvia Pinches, Ledbury: A Market Town and its Tudor Heritage, Phillimore, Chichester, Phillimore, 2009. 192 pp. £14.99. 9781860775987.

Sylvia Pinches, Ledbury: A Market Town and its Tudor Heritage, Phillimore, Chichester, Phillimore, 2009. 192 pp. £14.99. 9781860775987.

Symptoms of Depression in Israeli Adolescents Following a Suicide Bombing

This report investigated the potential role of gender in moderating the effects of terror attack exposure on depression symptoms in middle school students from Dimona, Israel ( N = 90). Specifically, the effects of three aspects of terror attacks were investigated: physical exposure, relational exposure, and media exposure. Ninety early adolescents were assessed for terror exposure and depression before and after a suicide bombing in a town market. Results indicate that the effects of relational exposure to the suicide bombing—knowing others directly affected by a suicide bombing—on depression symptoms differed by gender. Adolescent girls who knew people affected by the suicide bombing reacted with higher levels of depressive symptoms while similarly exposed adolescent boys did not. It may be that girls, as compared to boys, express greater sympathy for victims, and are hence more vulnerable to disruptions of their social network, resulting in a heightened depressive vulnerability.

AVALIAÇÃO DA COMPOSIÇÃO E QUALIDADE FÍSICO-QUÍMICA DO LEITE PASTEURIZADO PRADONIZADO COMERCIALIZADO NA CIDADE DE SÃO LUÍS, MA

RESUMO Objetivou-se com este estudo avaliar a composição e a qualidade físico-química do leite pasteurizado padronizado comercializado na Cidade de São Luis, MA, verificar se estavam dentro dos padrões estabelecidos pela Instrução Normativa nº 51 do Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento e observar a ocorrência de fraudes econômicas como adição de água, através da densidade e crioscopia. Foram coletadas 20 amostras de leite pasteurizado padronizado durante o mês de maio de 2009, no comércio local da cidade. Foram realizadas análises de acidez, densidade, índice crioscópico, EST, ESD, proteína, gordura, cinzas, prova de peroxidase e fosfatase alcalina. Das 20 amostras analisadas, verificou-se que a densidade variou de 1,020 a 1,027 g/mL; a acidez de 10 a 14ºD; a gordura de 2,5 a 3,8%; o EST de 8,6 a 11,36%; ESD 6,1 a 7,86%; crioscopia 0,414 a 0,505ºC; proteínas de 2,4 a 3,32% e cinzas de 0,49 a 0,95%, a % de água adicionada variou de 1,27 a 17,83%. Todas as amostras apresentaram fosfatase negativa e peroxidase positiva. Com relação aos resultados obtidos, pode-se concluir que se apresentaram de forma geral insatisfatórios, evidenciando, principalmente, fraude do produto. Portanto, torna-se necessária a adoção de medidas de fiscalização por parte das autoridades competentes e maior conscientização das indústrias e consumidores.

Informal institutions as mechanisms to address challenges in communal grazing land management in Tigray, Ethiopia

The role of institutions providing rules, norms and regulations, in addressing challenges in communal resources management has been debated for several decades. This article analyses the role of informal institutions for addressing shortage of grazing land, conflicts among users of communal grazing land and resistance among users to shift from free grazing to zero grazing in Tigray, Ethiopia. We used in depth interviews and focus group discussions for data collection. We argue that informal institutions are important mechanisms for addressing the challenges in communal grazing land management. The contributions of informal institutions for addressing challenges in communal grazing lands varied with type of challenge and were influenced by distances from markets and Wereda towns. Although the informal institutions were crucial in reversing the shortage of grazing land by regulating access to communal grazing land and enhancing controlled use of grass, they did not contribute to resolving conflicts that arose from unequal allocation of benefits in the village far from a market and Wereda town. Incorporating zero-grazing practices in informal institutions was hindered by disagreements among users and the top-down approach used by development agents when introducing zero grazing. To enhance effectiveness of informal institutions, the increasing grazing pressure should be addressed using more efficient schemes for harvesting grass. Moreover, creating awareness of the need for fewer but more productive cattle breeds is crucial. Consideration of well-performing informal institutions in policy and development interventions is essential to maximise the benefits of communal grazing lands to improve livelihoods of users.

An Interview in Zion: The Life-History of a Jamaican Rastafarian in Shashemene, Ethiopia

An Interview in ZionThe Life-History of a Jamaican Rastafarian in Shashemene, Ethiopia Giulia Bonacci (bio) On September 27, 2003, I sat with Rastafarian Junior Dan1 on the top of his unfinished house in the Jamaica sefer (the Jamaican neighborhood) on the outskirts of Shashemene, a southern Ethiopian market town. I solicited him for an interview as I was conducting research on the social history of the Rastafari repatriation to Ethiopia and their settlement on the “Shashemene land grant.”2 I had been in Shashemene for almost a year and had by then a fairly good understanding of the history and of the contemporary dynamics of the settlement. In 1950, five gashas—or 200 hectares—of fertile land in the periphery of Shashemene were granted by Emperor Haile Selassie to the members of the Ethiopian World Federation who had defended Ethiopia during the Italian war (1935–1941). As a token of appreciation for their moral and financial support, the “black people of the world” were invited to come to Ethiopia, to settle, and to contribute to the country’s development. The Ethiopian World Federation (EWF) was founded on August 25, 1937, in New York, on order of the Emperor by Melaku E. Beyen, an Ethiopian who had previously studied in the United States and was married to an African American lady. The EWF’s objective was to agitate public opinion about the cause of Ethiopia, to raise funds for the war effort, and to contribute to Pan African solidarity. The Shashemene land grant represented a tangible territory with which Back-to-Africa aspirations could identify. A few Caribbean and African American settlers arrived during the 1950s and 1960s, but it is Jamaican Rastafarians who eventually peopled Shashemene’s settlement. Coming directly from Jamaica since 1968, their arrivals slowed down during the years of the Derg (1974–1991) and resumed with the change of regime in 1991. Reflecting the ongoing internationalization of the Rastafari movement, Rastafarians poured in from many different countries and backgrounds. Today, the Rastafarian community of Shashemene, about 600 men, women, and children of fifteen nationalities, is unique in Africa in its longevity and its diversity. Of the sixty recorded interviews conducted during my research, Junior Dan’s is particularly interesting. A fluid and balanced exercise in oral history, Junior Dan’s interview is fairly representative of a “generation” of settlers, young men—and a few women—from the Rastafari organization the Twelve Tribes of Israel who came to settle in Shashemene since 1972. His life-history illustrates how he became a Rastafarian, and particularly a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, how he left Jamaica, as well as the vicissitudes of living in Ethiopia. As such, it unveils the social experience of repatriation to Shashemene and life in Ethiopia in the past thirty years. The voices of the returnees represent a methodological tool particularly important for historical research. Once collected, discussed, [End Page 744] and analyzed, these voices offer unique insights into the little-known history of African American and Caribbean settlers in Ethiopia. Furthermore, they contribute to the shaping of the history of the Rastafari movement, determined by the role played by its organizations and their mobilization towards the Shashemene settlement. They offer yet another version of the major social and political changes that swept Ethiopia since the 1970s. Eventually, these voices articulate the challenges and the significance of the Pan African relationship as experienced not by the Pan African elites but in the everyday interactions of “small people” in a particular location. Oral history has a particular rhythm, shaped by intonation, a particular vocabulary and grammar, and is accompanied by the language of the eyes, hands, and body. Publishing oral history raises a number of issues and it is an uneasy task to pay tribute to the power conveyed by the sound once it is fixed on paper. While Jamaican patois has been honored through many literary works, it remains little known in academic circles. For the sake of clarity, the life-history of Junior Dan has been slightly edited. However, peculiarities of his voice have been left in the text. An unorthodox use of English, it has a poetic strength and...

<i>Kumar Talkies</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Kumar Talkies Ashish Chadha (bio) Kumar Talkies (1998); DVD-R distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, 2000 Kumar Talkies is a meandering documentary about the only cinema theater in Kalpi, a nondescript, inconsequential town in northern India. Kalpi lies at the forgotten margins of postcolonial India, away from the alluring metropolitan center of Indian cultural modernity. A medieval market town shorn of its premodern imminence and now a waylaid bazaar of local agrarian produce and minor industries, it is here that the rustic Indian masses that consume the affective sensorium of Hindi cinema toil and subsist. Kalpi’s historical self-imagination is represented by this popular cinema as the battlefield where the rebellious queen of Jhansi valiantly fought the British during India’s first war of independence in 1857. Immortalized in the popular Hindi film Jhansi Ki Rani (1952), Kalpi sits on the edge of the Chambal Valley, a site often featured in 1960s dacoit, or “bandit,” films. Cinema in Kalpi is a part of the everyday banality of discreet pleasure and wasted desire. Cinema is indispensable for Kalpi, but it [End Page 163] has an ambivalent relationship to its people, who watch it on cable in the privacy of their bedrooms or in the town’s only theater. Kumar Talkies is their only source of public entertainment. Audiences trot to this ramshackle theater three times a day to see soft porn movies or gratuitous B-grade Bollywood masala fare. Often abruptly interrupted by power outages or missing scenes, these fragments of discontinuous cinema are conspicuously consumed by the subaltern working class of Kalpi. Projecting scratched and faded celluloid through a rickety projector with screechy sound, Kumar Talkies is a family operation catering to the unfulfilled gratification of the town’s apathetic men folk. Director Pankaj Rishi Kumar enters this social sphere of debased pleasure and inconsequential propensity to document, almost with ethnographic acuity, the place of cinema in small-town India, far away from the glamorous enthrallment of Bombay into the dusty turgidity of northern India. Trained as an editor at the Film and Television Institute of India, Kumar began his career as an assistant editor on the celebrated film Bandit Queen (1994). Subsequently disillusioned with the mainstream Indian film industry, he made this 16mm documentary with his own money to fathom the seductive allure of the cinematic pleasures that had ensnared him. Kumar Talkies begins as a seemingly conventional documentary intervention to unobtrusively explore the role of cinema in a provincial, nonmetropolitan India, but slowly and unmindfully, the film descends into the domain of the personal. The decrepit, monkey-strutting, pigeon-infested theater was actually a gutted lentil mill that Kumar’s father inherited and, in 1969, transformed into a talkie. Kumar uses the theater as an emotional conduit to make forays into his own family history, both to examine his quirky love of cinema inherited from his father, a retired government official, and to explore the role of cinema in Kalpi during the emerging twenty-four-seven cable television onslaught of the late 1990s. Kumar adeptly excavates the pedestrian geography of his ancestral town to make a documentary that navigates his autobiography to tell a tale about cinema. In the film, his obsession with cinema, his father’s fetish with films, and Kalpi’s love for cinema all collapse into a single narrative that comments on the affective role of cinema in contemporary India. The family in Kumar Talkies provides the film with a personal locus around which the affective narrative of the documentary is woven. Kumar’s father had recently died, and Kumar uses the documentary as a memorial to his father’s fascination with cinema as well as to address his own susceptibility toward the medium. Kumar subtly ties his infective relationship to cinema as a filmmaker to the emotive bond that he shared with his father as the only one of three sons to choose cinema as a profession. The search for what cinema means to Kalpi’s inhabitants becomes a metaphor for Kumar’s own quest, mirrored in his delicate excavation of his deceased father’s eccentric obsession. The documentary is driven by a sense of poignancy—the story of a...

Sir Astley Paston Cooper

Sir Astley Paston Cooper

Assessing the Economic Impact of Culture in English Market Towns: A Causal Chain Approach

In assessing the economic impact of a cultural event or attraction, the number of visits caused by the event or attraction is the pivotal variable. In the instance of many visitors, the causal impact is neither absent nor complete, but partial. The authors develop a method of assessing directly the aggregate causal impact of a cultural event or attraction and apply this in four case studies of culture in market towns. There emerges a pattern in the way economic impact comes about.

Toward a better appraisal of urbanization in India

Until now, studies of urbanization in India have been based only on official urban figures as provided by Census surveys. This approach has inevitably introduced several avoidable biases into the picture, distortions which are further compounded by numerous regional inter-Census adjustments. A much sounder option is now available in the Geopolis approach [www.e-geopolis.eu], which follows the United Nations system of classifying as urban all physical agglomerates with at least 10,000 inhabitants.From this standpoint, the Indian scenario exhibits all signs of a much-diffused process of urbanization rather than a major demographic polarization led by mega-cities. While 3,279 units were officially categorized as urban, the Geopolis criterion has identified 6,467 units with at least 10,000 inhabitants. Moreover, Geopolis estimates the urban population at 37% for 2001, which is 10% more than the official Census estimate. In absolute terms, this difference accounts for 100 million inhabitants. Brought to light by both physical identification and gradation of the census units of all localities as well as a study of the morphological profiles of individual agglomerates, a major finding reveals a greater spread of the country’s metro and secondary cities than previously believed. Statistical and political considerations have obscured the emergence of small agglomerations of between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. This omission can only be seen as a gap in the national policy on planning and urban development. In other words, the country seems to be firmly headed toward an extended process of metropolitanization alongside diffused combinations of localized socio-economic opportunities, clusters, cottage industries, and market towns partially interlinked by developmental corridors. Far from a dual model of modern versus traditional, urban versus rural, metro city versus small town, the Indian subcontinent features many sub-regional settings which converge, overlap, and diverge. This study of the distribution of current and emerging agglomerations challenges the pertinence of the urban/rural divide.

Anna Rossiter, Hexham in the Seventeenth Century: Economy, Society and Government in a Northern Market Town. Hexham: Hexham Local History Society, 2010. viii + 302pp. 29 tables. 17 maps and illustrations. 8 figures. Bibliography. £25.00 hbk, £15.00 pbk. £10.00 digital download.

Anna Rossiter, Hexham in the Seventeenth Century: Economy, Society and Government in a Northern Market Town. Hexham: Hexham Local History Society, 2010. viii + 302pp. 29 tables. 17 maps and illustrations. 8 figures. Bibliography. £25.00 hbk, £15.00 pbk. £10.00 digital download.

Kvaderstenskirker mellem Viborg og Randers – Et bygningsarkæologisk studie

The medieval churches of Sønderlyng and Middelsom districtsIn 12th century Jutland, a tradition developed of building churches of granite ashlars. In the northern part of the peninsula, the main inspiration for this came from the cathedral in Viborg, construction of which began just prior to AD 1150 and continued until completion during the first decades of the 13th century. In this article, the author attempts to identify similarities and differences in this building method by way of a buildings archaeological survey of 29 churches within a restricted geographical area comprising Sønderlyng and Middelsom districts, which are located just east of Viborg (fig. 1). An assessment has also been undertaken of the originality of the individual standing monuments. This is also based on the above-mentioned observations, together with information from the relevant archives. The methods applied have been developed with the aim of describing and comparing the basic features of Romanesque ashlar churches, such as their ground plans, plinths, dimensions, course heights, windows and portals (figs. 2-7, 9, 15). The most recent account of a group of Romanesque ashlar churches from 1942 deals with the churches in Thisted county and has, to some extent, been compared with the results of the present study.These results show that considerable parts of the masonry have been re-laid as a consequence of the extensive repairs and restoration work carried out across the country during the late 19th century. These were executed mainly on south-facing walls, leaving the majority of the original church wall sections to be found on their northern sides. The results also demonstrate that certain norms and regulations prevailed in early church building within the study area. The ground plans were laid out according to certain proportional principles, and the heights of the ashlar courses heights decreased upwards. A church with an apse would be provided with richer decoration in the form of, for example, profiled plinths and cornices and columned portals of various types. One of these types, with six free-standing columns, a particular elaborate architectonic characteristic of the area, is found only on apsed churches. Conversely, apses which were added subsequently can be identified partly through their plainer decorative expression and, in a few instances, by their divergent ground plan.The artistic details of Romanesque church building in the area show great variation, and it is argued that the finer stonework, such as the Ørum portal (fig. 16), could have been produced in central workshops in the market towns. Furthermore, based on the work of Elna Møller and Jens Vellev, it is pointed out that the original apsed churches and six free-standing columned portals date from the last quarter of the 12th century. However, the distinct portal in Vorning (fig. 14) is probably slightly older.When compared, a certain pairing tendency can be observed in some of the churches, for example those in Ålum and Tånum. This provides a hint concerning the organisation of early ashlar church building. Compared to the much larger group of ashlar churches in Thisted County, the ground plans of the churches in these two districts are slightly wider, and they are more elaborate architectonically, at least with respect to the portals. Several distinct regional features are thereby recognisable, but it is apparent that there was also a certain degree of cultural exchange between the various parts of Jutland.Anders Christian ChristensenHorsens Museum

Micro‐credit for microenterprises?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that constrain women petty traders' access to microcredit, and the innovative measures they have initiated in order to counter these constraints.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on in‐depth interviews with women micro‐entrepreneurs drawn from a convenience sample of 20 petty traders in the market town of Awka – the capital of a state in Eastern Nigeria.FindingsThe paper identifies three main constraints – internal, socio‐cultural and policy induced – as the key moderating influences on women petty traders' ability access to micro‐credit.Research limitations/implicationsConsidering the sample size and research context, the generalisation of the findings may need to be interpreted with caution. However, the paper finds evidence of most of these findings in other studies on other contexts.Practical implicationsThis paper posits that the lack of access to credit promotes market exclusion, and deepens the socioeconomic and political vulnerability of women as a consequence. Such vulnerability has prompted these microenterpreneurs into venturing to alternative sources of credit in the form of “Women August Meetings”. The paper has far reaching implications for public policy support geared towards “leveraging” and mainstreaming these initiatives for maximum outreach.Originality/valuePrevious research in the area of micro‐credit access seem to have paid limited attention to the peculiar challenges of this segment of society, i.e. petty traders, who incidentally also form the bulk of occupants at the bottom‐of‐the‐pyramid.

Pulling Pranks: James Stern's Reminiscences of an Edwardian Childhood

Pulling Pranks:James Stern's Reminiscences of an Edwardian Childhood Kris Somerville and Speer Morgan Escaping the yoke of his Edwardian parents, in 1929 James Stern sailed from Southampton, England, to New York City. When he entered the country, an immigration official asked him what he did, and he replied, "I write." The man asked him what he wrote. "Letters," he said. At the time Stern was insecure about calling himself a writer since he had not published a single story. Yet his literary career would eventually be admired as much for his fiction as for an impressive body of correspondence with many of the most famous American and British authors of the first half of the twentieth century, including Katherine Anne Porter, Djuna Barnes, Christopher Isherwood, Nadine Gordimer, Malcolm Lowry, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett and W. H. Auden. Van Wyck Brooks called him "the best letter writer living." [End Page 123] Among his friends he was known as one of the most talented and underrated writers in England and America. The Heartless Land (1932), a short-story collection depicting British imperialist culture in Africa, and The Hidden Damage (1947), his nonfiction account of the physical and spiritual ruins of Germany after World War II, were considered to be among the finest books to come out of the '30s and '40s. Auden and Isherwood wrote in a joint review for Vogue of James's second story collection, Something Wrong (1938), "If the English public could recognize genuine, solid talent, undecorated by the tricks which make for notoriety, Stern's name would be famous in England today." We have come to expect certain patterns in literary careers-the meteoric rise, the posthumous rediscovery, the vanishing recluse, the one-hit wonder or the eventually recognized workhorse-but no two are exactly alike. James Stern's resists categorization. The first third of his writing life was devoted to perfecting his craft in the short story, a form he mastered in the fifty stories he composed. Reviewing art and literature for The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation and Partisan Review consumed the second third of his career. The last decades of his life were spent in collaboration with his wife, Tania, translating from German the work of Freud, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Brecht. He also wrote considerably more letters (sometimes as many as eight a day), and the roster of famous friends increased. Stern was born on December 26, 1904, at Kilcairne Park, a grand nineteenth-century home near the small market town of Navan in County Meath, Ireland, an area known as hunting country. When James was six, the growing family moved to a larger home, Bective House. He roamed the tranquil, lush gardens, explored the surrounding woods and heather fields and ran over the endless slopes of mown grass; still he was lonely amid the family's routines of hunting and shooting. His boredom was occasionally alleviated by pulling pranks with his brother, aunt and older cousins. Despite the pastoral setting and growing up the eldest of five children in the midst of privilege and wealth, he had an unhappy childhood. He was never close to his parents, who showed little affection toward their children. His father's life centered on the military and his mother's on horses. Together they foxhunted, a sport that never interested James. Encouraged to be hearty and robust, he was frail and fearful. And he was no huntsman; he could rarely be coaxed into mounting a horse. Like most upper-class Anglo-Irish children, he was educated by a governess at home. When he was nine and his brother Reggie eight, they were sent [End Page 124] off to boarding school. They made the complicated, multiday journey on their own to their prep school, Wixenford, in Berkshire. World War I was a constant shadow over their school days. Their father had joined his regiment in Limerick and from there moved to the battlefields of the Somme. Overcoming his childhood fears, James considered his travels an adventure despite the threats of German U-boats and the long stints without food. He was less excited about his school and the "sprigs of nobility" who...