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Aumonier, Stacy

The short stories of, [90] 86

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20260601100015 Slightly Foxed Issue 90

Miss Bracegirdle and Others

James Runcie on the short stories of Stacy Aumonier

Researching a book about cricket, I came across Stacy Aumonier’s ‘The Match’, a short story written in 1916, recalling a game played at the height of summer two years previously, just before the Great War was declared. The devastating contrast between ‘the clean sanity of that sunlit field’ and the battleground that followed is a familiar literary idea, but Aumonier was one of the first to employ it. He looks back with disbelief at the innocence and generosity of spirit with which the game was played, the ‘good luck’s’ and the ‘well played’s’, the kindness and the cheerfulness of all those involved, the lunch, the drinks and the farewells, and can’t believe that so many of the players have since died. It’s a loving, elegiac and painful tale.

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