The Hill Bachelors

VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2001

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by William Trevor

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 2000. Published simultaneously in the United States by Penguin Books, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, Toronto, in 2000. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of

Random House of Canada Limited.

“Three People” first appeared in London Magazine, “Of the Cloth,” “The Mourning,” “A Friend in the Trade,” “The Telephone Game,” and “The Hill Bachelors” in The New Yorker, “Good News” in The Hudson Review, “The Virgin’s Gift” in The Sunday Times (London); and “Against the Odds” in Harper’s Magazine. “Le Visituer” (under the title “The Summer Visitor”), “Death of a Professor,” and “The Telephone Game” were published in Great Britain in individual volumes by Travelman Publishing, Colophon Press, and Waterstone, respectively.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

These selections are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Trevor, William, 1928–

The hill bachelors

eISBN: 978-0-307-36739-6

I. Title.

PR6070.R4H54 2001 823′.914 C2001-901177-6

www.randomhouse.ca

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