Two by Two
The next collection, and a tighter one — four long stories organised around marriage.
Read our take
The Honeyed Peace
Stories from the peace that followed the war, written by someone unconvinced by it.
- 1953
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA collection of stories published in 1953, most of them set in the Europe left behind once the fighting stopped. Gellhorn had spent the 1940s reporting the war and then its aftermath, and the title is doing sardonic work: the peace in these stories is a settlement people are living inside rather than a resolution. It is the first of the three collections that show her as a writer of social fiction rather than only a correspondent.
The story, in more detail
The title story is the one piece of the collection that is easy to reach: it ran in The Atlantic in 1948, and follows Anne Marsh, an American Red Cross woman in postwar Paris, among survivors and returnees whose lives the Occupation has permanently bent out of shape. A second story, About Shorty, is cited in the scholarship. The rest of the contents cannot be listed here — neither omnibus volume gathered this book, and no contents page for it is readily available.
What the collection is about is easier to establish than what is in it. The stories move through Paris, London, New York, Havana, Rome, Madrid and Israel, and their subject is the private aftermath of the war rather than the war: loss, displacement, memory, and social forms that no longer fit the people performing them. Most of the central figures are women, several of them in circumstances close to Gellhorn's own in those years. The title carries the argument. There is a peace, and nobody in these stories is convinced by it.
Themes and analysis
After the war, behind the glass
This reading concerns the collection’s title story. Lady Elizabeth’s encounter with the jeweller’s window measures the distance between victory and reward. Her aircraft-factory work has marked her hands, while the necklace remains beyond reach. The contrast invites a question about what peace restores: the visibility of luxury is not evidence that wartime effort has acquired lasting value. The glass can be read as a boundary between a public display of recovery and a private sense of being left behind.
What peace cannot settle
Anne’s difficulty with Evangeline is not simply a failure to find comforting words. She condemns collaboration, yet wants to help a friend whose husband has been imprisoned for it. Compassion and judgment pull in different directions. Ellen Bonds reads this encounter as a challenge to Anne’s understanding of courage. In that light, the title’s sweetness becomes an accusation: the end of fighting has not supplied a language in which friendship, guilt and grief can be reconciled. Peace leaves Anne with obligations she cannot discharge by declaring the past finished.
Why we recommend it
The reporter's eye on private life
The same attention she gave to refugees and the wounded, turned on drawing rooms and marriages.
Postwar Europe from inside it
Written in the early fifties about the late forties, by someone who had been there for both.
The start of the fiction proper
First of the three collections; Two by Two and Pretty Tales for Tired People follow the same line.
What this book explores
Timeline
1948
The title story runs in The Atlantic, following an American Red Cross woman among the survivors of postwar Paris.
1953
Doubleday publishes the collection, the first of the three that show Gellhorn as a writer of social fiction rather than only a correspondent.
1978
Penguin's Harmondsworth printing is the book's last; it remains the hardest of the three collections to find.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Doubleday
- 1953
Paperback
- Paperback
- Penguin
- 1956
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Books for Libraries Press
- 1970
Paperback
- Paperback
- Penguin
- 1978
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Face of War
The reporting from the same years, for the contrast between what she filed and what she invented.
Read our takeThe Honeyed Peace: frequently asked questions
Who wrote The Honeyed Peace?
Martha Gellhorn. The story collection was published in 1953.
What is The Honeyed Peace about?
Stories mostly set in the Europe left behind once the fighting stopped — people living inside an uneasy postwar settlement rather than a real peace.
Is the title ironic?
Yes. The "peace" of these stories is a settlement people are living with, not a repose — the title is doing sardonic work.
What is its best-known story?
The title story, "The Honeyed Peace," which ran in The Atlantic in 1948 and follows a woman named Anne Marsh.
How does it fit Gellhorn's career?
It came out of the 1940s she spent reporting the war and then its aftermath — the fiction shadowing the journalism.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Honeyed Peace, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Honeyed Peace
NovelMartha Gellhorn, 1953Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Imagining War and Peace: American Women’s Short World War II Fiction
NonfictionLehigh University, 1996Used forPublished analysis and historical context used in preparing the The Honeyed Peace page.
3Martha Gellhorn: A Life
BiographyCaroline Moorehead, 2003Used forUsed to place The Honeyed Peace within Martha Gellhorn's published work and verify its bibliographic context.
4Martha Gellhorn — War Correspondent and Writer | Blue Plaques
WebsiteEnglish HeritageUsed forUsed for independent biographical, archival, or historical context surrounding Martha Gellhorn's career and the period in which The Honeyed Peace appeared.
5Ernest Hemingway Collection — Martha Gellhorn (Hemingway) | EH@JFK, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
WebsiteJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumUsed forUsed to cross-check authorship, chronology, and the work's place in Martha Gellhorn's wider catalogue.
6Martha Gellhorn | Historic Missourians
WebsiteThe State Historical Society of MissouriUsed forUsed to verify Martha Gellhorn's bibliography and place The Honeyed Peace within the broader chronology of Martha Gellhorn's career.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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