The Camberwell Beauty and Other Stories is a collection of nine works of short fiction by V. S. Pritchett first published in 1974 by Chatto & Windus and by Random House.
The stories originally appeared individually in periodicals, including The New Yorker, Playboy and Encounter [See Stories section below].
The date, where available, and journal of original publication are indicated:
Penelope Mortimer in the New York Times identifies Pritchett's "minor literary genre" represented in the volume and its perennial cast of characters and themes: "[S]eedy antique dealers and Sunday sailors, adulterous academics, a confused editor of a leftwing periodical, an unlikely film director, lonely people with dogs; old age and remembered childhood."
Times literary critic Anatole Eroyard contends that Pritchett has "given up exploring motives and illustrating characters as being too simple, unworthy of the name of art" and, as such, the characters remain largely an unsolved "mystery." Eroyard writes:
He adds: "The stories give you a few clues and the rest is up to you."
Novelist and short story writer Eudora Welty in the New York Times offered this assessment of the collection: