V.S. Pritchett was the most significant English short story writer of the twentieth-century, “the English Chekhov”.

Victor Sawdon Pritchett was born in 1900 above a toy-shop in Ipswich. His father, Walter Sawdon, was a, unreliable, travelling salesman who converted to Christian Science when VSP was a boy. The family moved to London where VSP briefly attended Alleyn’s School in Dulwich. At the age of 15 Pritchett left school to work in the leather trade, first as an office boy and later as a messenger.

After several years he was given a year’s leave of absence to travel and moved to Paris in May 1921 where he worked in a photographic shop and began to write. Pritchett’s first publications were a series of sketches of French life in The Christian Science Monitor and it led to a job as the Monitor’s Irish correspondent. VSP arrived in Ireland in February 1923 to cover the Irish Civil War and soon met, and married, an Irish actress, Evelyn Maude Vigors. In January 1924 they moved to Spain where VSP became the Monitor’s Spanish correspondent.

V.S. published a short story, ‘Rain in the Sierra’ in the New Statesman in 1923 and would write for the magazine for the next fifty years. In 1927 VSP was fired by the Monitor, simultaneously his marriage came to an end, and he decided to walk across Spain. The experience provided the material for his first published book, Marching Spain, in 1928 and in 1930 his first collection of short stories was published, The Spanish Virgins and Other Stories. He was a professional writer for the rest of his life, publishing novels, travel literature, essays, journalism and short stories.

Pritchett had moved back to London in 1928 and reviewing books (for the New Statesman and Spectator, among others) became his regular source of income. From 1935 he began to publish regular essays in the New Statesman on classic writers, including Cervantes, Balzac and Tolstoy, which made VSP England’s most widely read literary critic. During World War Two Pritchett worked for the Ministry of Information as well as broadcasting for the BBC.

In 1946 Pritchett became the literary editor of the New Statesman and would later become a director of the magazine. In the 1950’s, alongside publishing widely, Pritchett was often invited to the United States as a guest lecturer at, among others, Princeton and the University of California.

In 1967 Pritchett was awarded the Royal Society of Literature award for his memoir of his early life, A Cab at the Door. In the 1970s VSP played a major role in literary life as president of International P.E.N. and president of the Society of Authors. He was knighted in 1975 before being made a Companion of Honour in 1993. V.S. Pritchett died in 1997.