later works of fiction and travel pieces. His first book,Marching Spain (1928), came out of these early travels. Their peripatetic life did much to feed his wanderlust, a feature of his life until his old age. Although his marriage was falling apart, being constantly on the move agreed with him, and it proved useful to his growing output of fiction, novels as well as short stories. Clare Drummer appeared in 1929, The Spanish Virgin, and Other Stories in 1930, and a second novel, Shirley Sanz, in 1932. He also kept up a consistent stream of articles and journalism.

Through the late 1920’s the Monitor remained his chief source of consistent income, but VSP reviewed extensively for the New Statesman, the Spectator, and the Fortnightly Review and was doing some translating for pennies a word. He also published some ten stories between 1930 and 1932. This substantial output established his career, but much of this early work VSP later disavowed.

Treglown points out that VSP never really became a “Spanish Civil War Writer” like so many of his contemporaries, but his knowledge of the people and typography of Spain made him sought-after to cover the events there during the conflict. In 1935 he was sent by the Fortnightly Review as a correspondent and reported on not only the war but also on the effect it was having on the people in, for its time, a fairly balanced way. Treglown’s remark about his not becoming a “Spanish Civil War Writer” is based primarily on his not becoming especially partisan in his reports.

VSP met Dorothy Roberts in 1934, when he was thirty-three and she nineteen. They began an affair at once. His marriage to Evelyn was over, and he was ready for another. Dorothy and Victor were married in October, 1936, and their first child, a daughter, Josephine, was born a year later. A son, Oliver was born two years after that. Although his second marriage was also challenging at times, especially because of his affairs and her drinking, husband and wife managed to stay together for the rest of his life.

Treglown remarks that VSP emerged from World War II not only as Britain’s leading man of letters but also as the greatest writer-critic since Virginia Woolf. He did his bit for the war effort, of course, as nearly everyone did in Great Britain at the time, by assuming official tasks at the Ministry of Information and at other governmental offices while reviewing and broadcasting on the radio on topical issues. At the BBC the canteen became for him a kind of international club, as the broadcast service attracted numerous writers and artists of every stripe. He traveled all over the island reporting on ordinary working people. He also collaborated with filmmakers on wartime documentaries and wrote propaganda, such as the pamphlet “Transport in War Time.” His keen eye for detail and his reporter’s skill at recounting the telling story made him an especially effective author for such otherwise mundane work. Treglown cites his anonymous illustrated booklet Build the Ships: The Official Story of the Shipyards in Wartime as a fine example of this sort of writing and one that still reads well today.

In addition to his official and semiofficial work for the government, VSP was also a very busy essayist, and his ongoing series for the wartime New Statesman provided for many people a literary education. His persona and accessible literary style made a perfect fit for the newly egalitarian demands of the times. Finally his working-class background paid off handsomely. His voice, once a detriment on the BBC, now became an asset: It was sincere, not too cultivated, and sensible. He became just the voice to report on the social changes in language and national identity and for the need for a new common culture that did not separate the classes. He spoke for the common person and kept his topics close to the world of most listeners. The radio brought him a larger audience than he had enjoyed before the war, and his writings made him the most eagerly read British literary critic and essayist of his time.

His wartime activities made the rest of his career and opened up new markets for his work, especially in the United States, where by the early 1950’s he was regularly published by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and later The New York Review of Books. His American publications also proved to be financially lucrative as well.

The end of the war allowed VSP to return to his fiction, and there was pressure for him to deliver his much-awaited new novel. The Pritchetts returned to London after living in the country, and once again he was close to his sources of income. Although his reputation was secure, his income still was not, and he threw himself back into his nonstop work schedule. He did not abandon his civic duties, either, and was early on involved with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He also chaired an exhibition of modern British books for the National Book League, and he campaigned for royalties from Britain’s free public libraries. Mr. Beluncle finally appeared in 1951 and became his most celebrated novel.

VSP was also busy as a father and husband, coping with the demands of his growing children and the increasingly erratic behavior of his wife. In 1953 he made a triumphant visit to the United States, where he discovered that he was both well known and well respected. Treglown calls him a transatlantic hit. While in the States he met and began an affair with another younger woman, the last of his serious lovers. It eventually precipitated a crisis in his marriage, but like the others, VSP and Evelyn managed to weather it, as they would her drinking problem.

After Mr. Beluncle VSP abandoned the novel, which must have cost him some pain because as a young writer it had been his goal to become a writer of long fiction. Now he concentrated on the short story, which he wrote and published regularly, eventually collecting them into highly regarded volumes (three between 1974 and 1980), and he became recognized as a master in the field. His essays now appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, earning him praise and, increasingly, much-needed money. By the 1960’s VSP was a celebrity of sorts, and when he went to California to teach at the University of California at Berkeley, he appeared on the set of his fellow countryman’s film The Birds (1963), which Alfred Hitchcock was filming north of San Francisco. VSP was even asked to make some suggestions on screenwriter Evan Hunter’s script.

Back home, VSP resumed his steady output of travel pieces, mostly for Holiday magazine, literary essays, and short stories. In 1968 he published the first of his autobiographical works, A Cab at the Door. In the same year he was made a Commander of the British Empire, one step down from knighthood, appointed Zisskind Professor at Brandeis University in New York, and invited to give the Clark Lectures at Kings College, Cambridge University. The beginning of the 1970’s found VSP embarking on a new career, that of biographer. George Meredith and English Comedy (1969) became, in Treglown’s assessment, the trial run for the three that would follow: Balzac (1973), Turgenev (1977), and Chekhov (1988). Biographies offered VSP an opportunity to write at length about writers he admired and had written about before, to explore the psychology of authorship, and to speculate about his subjects’ lives and works. They were novels without dialogue.

As VSP entered his ninth decade, he finally began to slow down. He was feted, awarded honors, and much photographed and painted. He had become a national treasure. The final years of his life were not without their travails, however. In the last story in the last of his books, called “The Image Trade,” the story of an aging writer and a photographer, he worried over the gap between self and reputation, though his reputation was now out of his hands. VSP had a stroke in April, 1995, and although he enjoyed outings with his children and grandchildren, he became increasingly addled. He was moved into a nursing home in December, 1996, where he suffered a second major stoke a month later. VSP died in Whittington Hospital on March 20, 1997. His wife died of cancer four years later.

In V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life, Treglown has written an engaging and thorough biography which not only covers the subject’s life but, as the subtitle suggests, his work as well. Because Pritchett converted many of his life experiences into his writing, Treglown’s emphasis is both enlightening and necessary and provides a comprehensive overview of both. As he did in his previous study of Henry Green, Treglown also surveys the literary and social events of his subject’s time, which provides the reader a background for understanding VSP’s work and also a general understanding of British literary culture of the period. This biography is thoroughly researched and written in an accessible and graceful style. It is a first-class piece of work.