Stories for Lovers

New anthology in the Women Writers series, including a diverse and international range of stories from well-known and forgotten female writers, published from the 1920s through to 2000. An older couple remove all the mirrors from their lake house to lose sense of time; two girls are cast as Romeo and Juliet in their college play; a woman bargains with God to let the man she loves telephone her. Women writers of the twentieth century had a complex relationship with romantic fiction, at once a denigrated genre yet also often considered their only legitimate domain by the male literary establishment. The women in this collection complicate our over-simplified understanding of the 'love story, ' crafting multifaceted, touching and vividly real stories of romantic love and loss. From chance meetings on trains to honeymoon bliss, tentative young love, doomed love, and settled love, this collection brings together some of the best short stories on romantic connection by women writers of the twentieth century.