Pretty Tales for Tired People
The companion collection seven years later, and gathered into the same omnibus.
Read our take
Two by Two
Four long stories about marriage, each one titled from a promise made at the altar.
- 1958
- 246
About Martha Gellhorn
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freePublished in 1958, this is the tightest of Gellhorn's story collections: four long stories about couples, organised by a device she takes from the marriage service, so that each borrowed vow is tested against a situation the ceremony never anticipated. The settings move between Europe and America and the tone is worldly rather than bitter. She is interested in what holds two people together after the reason for it has gone.
The story, in more detail
Four novellas titled in order from the marriage service: For Better for Worse, For Richer for Poorer, In Sickness and in Health, and Till Death Us Do Part. The cast is professional and mobile — politicians, journalists, war photographers — and the pressures are money, ambition, illness and work rather than romance.
For Richer for Poorer is the comedy of manners, built on Rose Answell, who has spent ten years pushing her husband up the political ladder. In Sickness and in Health is the grim one, a triangle around Annette, who has had heart disease for years. Till Death Us Do Part holds the only marriage in the book with real promise, between the war photographer Bara and Suzy, and the war destroys it. For Better for Worse opens the sequence; its couple cannot be identified here, because it is the one story of the four that the record has almost nothing to say about.
Why we recommend it
The most shapely book she wrote
Four stories, one device, no padding. The structure does real work rather than decorating the contents page.
Gellhorn away from the war
No dispatches, no correspondents. Marriage, money, illness and class, handled by someone who had reported harder things.
Findable, unlike the rest
The omnibus editions keep all four stories in print, which is more than can be said for The Honeyed Peace.
What this book explores
Timeline
1958
Simon & Schuster publishes the four marriage stories, with a UK edition from Longmans, Green the same year — written in Gellhorn's forties, after the Hemingway marriage.
1991
All four are gathered into The Short Novels of Martha Gellhorn, from Sinclair-Stevenson.
1994
The omnibus reaches America as The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn, from Vintage.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Simon & Schuster
- 1958
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Longmans, Green
- 1958
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Sinclair-Stevenson
- 1991
- Paperback
- Vintage
- 1994
- 9780679743699
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Two by Two: frequently asked questions
Who wrote Two by Two?
Martha Gellhorn. The collection was published in 1958.
What is Two by Two?
Four long stories about couples, each titled from a line of the marriage service — For Better for Worse, For Richer for Poorer, In Sickness and in Health — and each testing that vow against a situation the ceremony never anticipated.
What is the organizing device?
The vows of the marriage service, borrowed as titles and pressed against real marriages under strain.
Where is it set?
Its settings move across Europe and beyond, following each couple to where its story lives.
What kind of book is it?
The tightest of Gellhorn's story collections — four novellas on marriage.