Innocent Birds

T. F. Powys

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780571279043
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

'A village is like a stage that retains the same scenery throughout all the acts of the play. The actors come and go, and walk to and fro, with gestures that their passions fair or foul use them to... A country village has a way now and again of clearing out all its inhabitants in one rush, as though it were grown tired of that particular combination of human destinies, and shakes itself free of them as a tree might do of unwelcome leaves..'
The action of T.F. Powys' blackly absorbing, deeply characteristic Innocent Birds unfolds in the English croft of Madder, an ostensibly sleepy and settled milieu where the local people, nonetheless, are prone to acting on impulses and urges that have the power to bring themselves (and others) to ruin.
'There is Mr. Bugby, who buys "The Silent Woman" because of the sinister coincidence that successive keepers of that tavern were speedily widowed. There is Maud Chick, an imbecile girl longing to have a baby, whom Mr. Bugby avoids after one experience; and Polly Wimple, prim Miss Pettifer's maid whom he does not avoid, to her great cost. A cormorant, far from the sea, that flaps and roosts arbitrarily at dusk whenever anything especially morbid or malicious is about to take place, is an apt metaphor for a shadowy flight of the author's imagination...'
Time, June 1926

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Chapter i: MRS. CROCKER SEES A VISION
• Chapter ii: ‘THE SILENT WOMAN’
• Chapter iii: JOHN PIM
• Chapter iv: SOLLY’S BOOK
• Chapter v: ‘SUNSHINE DO BURN’
• Chapter vi: THE SUN KISSES POLLY
• Chapter vii: MOTHER MAUD
• Chapter viii: MR. THOMAS TUCKER
• Chapter ix: FRED
• Chapter x: ‘BEWARE’
• Chapter xi: MR. BUGBY FINDS A BLACK GLOVE
• Chapter xii: MISS PETTIFER COMES TO MADDER
• Chapter xiii: ‘GO TO BOSTON’
• Chapter xiv: FRED’S QUEEN
• Chapter xv: MR. BUGBY SEES A BLACK BIRD
• Chapter xvi: MAUD CHICK BEHAVES QUEERLY
• Chapter xvii: THE AMERICANS SEE A CROSS OF DOOM IN THE SKY
• Chapter xviii: ‘’TIS RELIGION,’ SAID MR. BUGBY
• Chapter xix: DERBY IN SPAIN
• Chapter xx: MR. TUCKER IS ASTONISHED
• Chapter xxi: DAISIES
• Chapter xxii: MRS. BUGBY’S FRIEND
• Chapter xxiii: MR. PIM KNOWS HIS GREATNESS
• Chapter xxiv: MR. SOLLY CONSIDERS
• Chapter xxv: ANOTHER BIRD FOR MR. BUGBY
• Chapter xxvi: SCATTERED BONES
• Chapter xxvii: FRED PIM COMES HOME TO MADDER
• Chapter xxviii: MISTER PIM
• Chapter xxix: THE FOOLISH GUILLEMOT
• Chapter xxx: MR. MOODY FINDS SALVATION
• Chapter xxxi: SOMEBODY FRIGHTENS MR. BUGBY
• Chapter xxxii: THE PERFECT GIFT
• About the Author
• Copyright