A Long Fourth and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Peter Taylor published in 1948 by Harcourt Brace Jovanich.Robison, 1988 p. 172: Selected Bibliography

Three of the stories in the collection were included in The Best American Short Stories: "The Fancy Woman", "Rain in the Heart", and "The Scout Master".Robison, 1988 p. 169-170

Stories The original periodical and date of publication are indicated.Robison, 1988 p. 172: Selected Bibliography: Stories

"A Spinster's Tale" (Southern Review, Autumn 1940) "Skyline" (Southern Review, Winter 1941) "The Fancy Woman" (Summer 1941) "Rain in the Heart" (Sewanee Review, Winter 1945) "The Scoutmaster" (Partisan Review, Summer 1945 [originally "The Scout Master"]) "A Long Fourth" (Sewanee Review, Summer 1946) "Allegiance" (The Kenyon Review, Spring 1947)

Background Taylor's first published work appeared in the small Mississippi journal River (spelled in lower case, "river," by its original publishers), two stories that Robert Penn Warren, editor at Louisiana State University's Southern Review, had declined to publish.Robison, 1988 p. 19: "...two stories...were published in 1937 by River, a small Mississippi journal." See Robison p. 175: Uncollected Stories. "A Spinster's Tale"—"Taylor's first story of lasting value"—was published in the summer 1941 edition of the LSU journal.Brown, 1962 p. 588: "Mr. Taylor has been publishing stories for twenty-five years now—his first two appeared in the little magazine River [river] in 1937..."Robison, 1988 p. 19: "...lasting value..."

Reception When A Long Fourth and Other Stories appeared in 1948, Taylor had already enjoyed the support of a "small but prestigious readership," including that of mentor and editor Robert Penn Warren.Robison, 1988 p. 7-8Brown, 1962 p. 588: " [W]hen A Long Fourth and Other Stories was published in 1948 he was already a leading member of his literary generation."

With its laudatory Introduction provided by Warren, Taylor's short fiction became widely known and admired by a number of mainstream literary critics.Robison, 1988 p. 8Giroux, 1995: "Peter's first book of storie came out in 1948 with a glowing preface by Robert Penn Warren and reviews comparing him to Chekhov."

Critic Ashley Brown writing in The Sewanee Review declared "A Long Fourth was one of the best collections of short fiction which appeared during the forties."Brown, 1962 p. 588

Narrative voice Critic William Peden characterizes Peter Taylor's male narrative persona as "urbane, witty, sophisticated, nostalgic" and "very much like Taylor himself"—conferring confidences upon members of his own upper-middle-class.Peden, 1970: "...a gentleman who is confiding in a lady or another gentleman."Beattie, 2017: "'Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time,' written in the indirect third person...asks us to believe a narrator who casually assumes that his views and the readers coincide." Author Joyce Carol Oates observes: "Taylor's writing is always impeccable; he is a gentleman confiding in another gentleman."Oates, 1971 p. 301, p. 5 in Robison.

Critic Robert Towers commented on the restrained voice of Taylor's male narrators:

Theme

William Peden writes that the collection is "concerned with family relationships in respectable, urban, middle or upper middle class Tennessee."Peden, 1970 p. 153 Robert Penn Warren identifies Taylor's key thematic concern in A Long Fourth:

Footnotes

Sources Beattie, Ann. 2017. "A Dream of a Writer" The American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa publishing. September 5, 2017. Accessed 30 April, 2026. Brown, Ashley. 1962. "The Early Fiction of Peter Taylor." The Sewanee Review, Autumn, 1962. Vol. 70, No. 4. pp. 588-602. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27540816 Accessed 16 April, 2026. Oates, Joyce Carol. 1971. "Reaction of Distance, Realism of Immediacy." Southern Review, Winter 1971. p. P. 295-301 in Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twanye Publishers, Boston. G. K. Hall & Co., Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Peden, William. 1970. "A Hard and Admirable Toughness: The Stories of Peter Taylor." The Hollin's Critic 7, no. 1, February 1970. pp. 1-9. Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. 1988. Twanye Publishers, Boston. G. K. Hall & Co., Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Robison, James Curry. 1988. Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twanye Publishers, Boston. G. K. Hall & Co., Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Taylor, Peter. 1948. A Long Fourth and Other Stories. Harcourt Brace Jovanich, New York. Taylor, Peter. 2009. The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. (paperback edition). Towers, Robert. 1985. "A Master of the Miniature Novel." New York Times, February 17, 1985. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/taylor-forest.html Accessed 14 April, 2026. Warren, Robert Penn. 1948. Introduction to The Long Fourth and Other Stories. pp. viii-x. Harcourt Brace Jovanich, New York. Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. P. 150-151. Twanye Publishers, Boston. G. K. Hall & Co., Gordon Weaver, General Editor.