Stroke of the Pen

A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories is a 2023 posthumous book containing a collection of rediscovered short stories written by Terry Pratchett for the Western Daily Press and Bucks Free Press newspapers under his own name as well as under his pseudonyms "Patrick Kearns" and "Uncle Jim". Seventeen of the twenty stories were initially published between 1970 and 1975; of the three remaining stories, one is from 1966, one from 1967, and the last story in the collection is from 1984. In addition to the short stories, the book features a foreword by Neil Gaiman, an introduction by Pratchett's agent Colin Smythe, and an account by fans Pat and Jan Harkin of the research they did looking for the serialised story, "The Quest for the Keys" (1984), which led them to uncover many of the other stories. A subset of the collection, including "The Quest for the Keys" and multiple stories taking place in the fictional city of Blackbury are especially notable for containing some of the earliest mentions of Discworld places and characters, which Pratchett would later develop into his best-known series spanning 41 books. The book was universally well received by critics, as an unexpected and welcome discovery of "new" writings by the deceased Pratchett. Critics noted that the author's characteristic witty and imaginative style was present in those early works, with the stories being praised for being well written, but without reaching the high calibre of his later works.