Intro
Acknowledgements
Contents
Note on Quotations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Modernist Short Fiction, the Canon and Criticism
Short Fiction Practice
Modernist Literature, Everyday Things
Snacks, Armchairs, Hats and Gloves
Chapter 2: Virginia Woolf's Armchair Aesthetics
Mental Furniture
The Armchair Critic and Critical Reading
Short Fiction as Armchair Literature
'The Mark on the Wall': Armchair Phenomenology
The View from the Armchair
Against Taxonomy
Reading Beyond the Page

'Sympathy' and 'A Summing Up': Armchairs, Stories and 'Being-Toward-Death'
'Solid Objects': The Democracy of Matter
Concluding Remarks: Armchair Phenomenology
Chapter 3: Snacks and Katherine Mansfield
Hors-d'oeuvres: The Life Beside the Work
Literary Fodder
A Thousand Leaves, with Cream: Tea with Oscar Wilde
Mansfield's Aesthetics: Re-creation and the Story-Snack
Stories, Snacks, Scraps
Short Rations
Bliss: Food for Thought
Abstention and Rot
Imaginative Snacking
Preludes
Creative Objects and Illuminating Experience

Dismantling the Victorian Meal: The Garden Party and Illicit Snacks
Cream Puffs and Bread and Butter
Chocolate Cake, Prepared Foods and Eggs in Various Forms
Concluding Remarks: Aftertaste
Chapter 4: Elizabeth Bowen and Eccentric Accessories
Accessories, Stories and the Dangerous Supplement
Detail, Women and War
Eccentric Reading
Hats
Angry Ghosts and Fairy Godmothers: 'Pink May' and 'Fairies at the Christening'
'Ann Lee's': Eccentric Logic
Gloves
Clues
Coming Home? Gloves and Creative Reading
'Dead Mabelle': Reading the Periphery

'A Love Story': Eccentric Meaning
'The Girl with the Stoop': Fortune Telling and Passive Reading
'The Demon Lover' and 'Hand in Glove': Reading Crimes and Punishment
Concluding Remarks: Eccentric Reading
Chapter 5: Conclusion: Stories and Their Objects-Reading and Being
Last Thoughts
List of Abbreviations
Books
Libraries
Bibliography
Index