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  • Published: 30 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780141188676
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $29.99

The Shooting Party




A masterpiece of historical fiction, and the inspiration behind Downton Abbey

It is 1913 - a breath away from the Great War - and Edwardian England is about to vanish into history. An assorted group of men and women gather at Sir Randolph Nettleby's estate for a shooting party. Opulent, adulterous, moving assuredly through the rituals of eating and slaughter, they are an era's dazzlingly obtuse and brilliantly decorative finale.

A quiet, elegant meditation on class frustration and the transience of human concern, The Shooting Party is also the inspiration behind one of the great landmarks of popular culture - Downtown Abbey.

  • Published: 30 November 2021
  • ISBN: 9780141188676
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $29.99

Other books in the series

Russian Thinkers
The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
When You Are Old
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
The Good Soldier
Selected Poetry
Man and Superman
Military Dispatches
The Prelude

About the author

Anton Chekhov

ANTON CHEKHOV (1860–1904) is regarded as one of the world’s masters of the short story. The son of a hapless shopkeeper and grandson of a former serf, Chekhov began at the age of twenty to support his family through the publication of magazine pieces. The writing of these short works—many of which were collected in English for the first time in Seven Stories’ Undiscovered Chekhov and Little Apples—served as the author’s apprenticeship in literature, which was undertaken simultaneously with his studies to become a doctor. Both of these educations would leave their mark on the rising author. By the 1890s Chekhov had moved on to weightier journals, and he had drifted away from the practice of medicine; but his work would always be characterized by the copywriter’s vividness and the sober exactitude of a scientist. In an age of literary aristocrats, Chekhov did as much as any modern writer to democratize the profession. He used his talent to examine the lives of street urchins, déclassé provincials and frustrated reformers. By the time of his death from tuberculosis in 1904, all Russia and much of the world had taken heed of his credo: “For chemists there is nothing unclean on the earth. The writer must be as objective as the chemist.”

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Praise for The Shooting Party

Threads of romance, social comment, country lore and intrigue both above and below stairs are cunningly worked together to create a brilliant tapestry... I have seldom enjoyed a book so much

Sunday Telegraph

Colegate has found a perfect metaphor for the passing of a way of life

Spectator

A minor masterpiece

Daily Mail

A modern classic

The Times