The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: A Harvest/HBJ Book. 622 pp. $8.95

Here in one volume is Eudora Welty's work, dating from the mid-'30s to the present. Much of it was included in previous collections, but the new book also includes two previously uncollected stories.

Her best stories bear the unmistakable stamp of classic works - works that will be read half a century from now with the sense, not that they have withstood or triumphed over the erosions of time, but that they have invented a permanent fictional time. They possess the density and texture of novels.