What most strikes me about Margaret Drabble's writing is her clarity. In each story, she paints so particular a portrait with perfect telling details. If someone in the distant future wants to know how the British lived and felt and *were* generally in the middle and end of the 20th century, they would learn a lot from Margaret Drabble's short stories. Many of these are very fine, and a few are outstanding, but for me, A Voyage to Cythera would be worth the price of the whole book. There are also treats for fans of Austen's _Persuasion_ and Wordsworth. Drabble knows just how lovers of literature carry it around inside us, and can imagine how the Elliots of Kellynch Hall might have come down in the world to walk among us.