The Lydia Steptoe Stories: Faber Stories (Faber Stories)

by Djuna Barnes

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Book cover for The Lydia Steptoe Stories

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Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.

'I have quite changed my mind. I am going to run away and become a boy.'

In these three stories, written by Djuna Barnes under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening - accompanied by guns, whips, and worldly innuendo.

A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become 'a virago', until her mother intercepts her first tryst by dressing up as her male lover. A boy of the same age is lured into the forest by his father's mistress. A woman of forty falls in love and longs to kill herself, so unbearable is the return of the youth she thought she wanted. 'Alice', she tells herself, 'be a man.'

Barnes makes gender and desire seem slippery and joyful - and makes the fictional Lydia Steptoe seem like a writer for our time.

  • ISBN10 057135467X
  • ISBN13 9780571354672
  • Publish Date 3 January 2019
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Faber & Faber
  • Edition Main
  • Format eBook (EPUB)
  • Pages 48
  • Language English