A Careless Widow and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by V. S. Pritchett published in 1989 by Random House.

The six stories first appeared individually in literary periodicals [See below Stories][1][2][3] Pritchett's last volume of original short fiction, A Careless Widow was published when he was eighty-eight.

[5] “The stories in A Careless Widow originally appeared in magazines —The New Yorker, Ladies Home Journal, Vanity Fair—but there is never a hint in them of the magazine short story formula, the telling phrase, the situation worked up.”—Critic John Bayley (2004)[2] Characterizing the stories as “quiet and deceptively simple,” New York Times critic Lorrie Moore writes: His is a very English fiction of irony arrayed, hypocrisy exposed, eccentricity embraced.

He captures the frustration and strain beneath the moral order of the average citizen, and he is nothing if not funny.

His prose is always limpid…[6]Moore adds “Sir Victor's is a literature of deep humanity—a mature artist's extension of affection into unexpected corners, a lover's unflagging interest in life.”[1]