Canongate bags Gray short stories

24.01.12 | Benedicte Page - The Bookseller

Canongate is to publish the complete short stories of Lanark author Alasdair Gray, after editorial director Francis Bickmore bought world rights in a deal with Zoe Waldie at RCW and Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury.

Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray will include his entire oeuvre in the short form from 1952 to 2012, namely 75 stories, 12 of them new, and illustrated throughout by the author. Work from his six previously published collections will also be included in the anthology. The book will be published in August as a £30 hardback, alongside the paperback of his "autopictography", A Life in Pictures.
Bickmore said: “This is going to be a lavish and wonderful book, and a landmark from one of the world’s most important writers. I am passionate about Gray’s stories and feel evangelical about getting others reading them too.
'There’s such an astonishing range, from sexual comedy to science fiction, social realism to flights of fancy, but they all share Gray’s generosity of spirit, his sense of humour in adversity and a desire that our culture flourish by telling the truth.
'I believe future historians will find in Gray a visionary of the stature of Blake, Scott or Joyce.”