← Back

Poor Stainless

Mary Norton

First published April 1971
Type Short Fiction
Length Novelette
Series The Borrowers #4 .5

"[B]ook adventures were to have concluded (since Borrowers had become so hidden there were no human witnesses to record their future exploits). But here is more about their <i>past</i> ...". --Low "Homily, encouraged by her daughter Arrietty, tells of a crisis in her youth when [boy Borrower] Stainless was lost. The whole Borrower family has to venture upstairs with large scale people in efforts to find him." --Gordon

  • Revised in 1971
  • Originally published in The Eleanor Farjeon Book: A Tribute to Her Life and Work, 1881-1965 (Hamish Hamilton, 1966), {{LCCN|68-121706}}; perhaps simultaneously in its US ed., A Book for Eleanor Farjeon [same subtitle] (H. Z. Walck, 1966).
  • US 1st ed. chapbook reviewed by Alice Low NY Times 1971-05-02 pBRA34 (negative), Virginia Haviland Chi. Tribune and Was. Post -05-09 (positive), Myra Gordon Bos. Globe -10-02 p15 (negative, except re illustrations). Haviland says "completely in tune with the four major volumes" but the others hear it out of tune, evidently because it is a short reminiscence.
  • Not found 2017-04-05 in automated search of multiple UK newspapers 1971/72.

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
April 1971 Cover Poor Stainless Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Chapbook
November 1971 Cover Poor Stainless J. M. Dent Chapbook
1994 Cover The Complete Borrowers Puffin Omnibus 703
August 1994 Poor Stainless Viking UK Collection 9
November 1997 Cover The Complete Borrowers Stories Puffin Omnibus |502
2007 Cover The Complete Borrowers Puffin Omnibus |502
October 2016 Cover The Borrowers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Omnibus
June 2018 Cover The Complete Borrowers Puffin Omnibus