H.E. Bates Companion

Bates's contribution to a compilation, by Michael Harrison, of fourteen stories by authors under the age of thirty, each story preceded by an "autobiographical note." Preceding his story "The Machine," Bates writes: "Left the newspaper--graduated to a warehouse dealing in nails, linen-thread, eyelets, stiffeners, calico-linings, leather, hessian, buckram, rivets, sprigs, heels, tapes, besides Heaven knows how many other things that are used in the making of a boot...[writing] did not prevent his being captain of the local football team, a member of the local cricket team, or hundred yards champion, in his socks, of the local sports. Would almost rather, in fact, have been an athlete than a writer." In Under Thirty: An Anthology (London: Rich & Cowan, 1939, pp. 27-28).