James Thurber

Now in paperbackOnce upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales.So begins James Thurber's sublimely revamped fairy tale, The 13 Clocks , in which a wicked Duke who imagines he has killed time, and the Duke’s beautiful niece, for whom time seems to have run out, both meet their match, courtesy of an enterprising and very handsome prince in disguise. Readers young and old will take pleasure in this tale of love forestalled but ultimately fulfilled, admiring its upstanding hero ( “who yearned to find in a far land the maiden of his dreams, singing as he went…and possibly slaying a dragon here and there” ) and unapologetic villain ( “We all have flaws,” the Duke said. “Mine is being wicked” ), while wondering at the enigmatic Golux, the mysterious stranger whose unpredictable interventions speed the story to its necessarily happy end.

A henpecked husband copes with the frustrations of his dull life by imagining he is a fearless airplane pilot, a brilliant doctor, and other dashing figures.

Princess Lenore, ill of a surfeit of raspberry tarts, wants the moon. She must have it, she says, to be well again. The King consults his wise men… but the Lord High Chamberlain cannot get the moon. Neither can the Royal Wizard. Nor the Royal Mathematician. Only when the King. In despair, calls on his lowly but clever Jester is the problem solved…

Alternate cover edition of ISBN-13: 9780060933081, ISBN-10/ASIN: 0060933089 “Thurber is... a landmark in American humor... he is the funniest artist who ever lived. ” — New RepublicWidely hailed as one of the finest humorist of the twentieth century, James Thurber looks back at his own life growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with the same humor and sharp wit that defined his famous sketches and writings. In My Life and Hard times, first published in 1933, he recounts the delightful chaos and frustrations of family, boyhood, youth, odd dogs, recalcitrant machinery, and the foibles of human nature.

James Thurber was one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century (and a crack cartoonist to boot). A bestseller upon its initial publication in 1999, The Thurber Carnival captures the depth of his talent and the breadth of his wit. The stories compiled here, almost all of which first appeared in The New Yorker , are from his uproarious and candid collection My World and Welcome to It —including the American classic "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"—as well as from The Owl in the Attic , The Seal in the Bathroom , and Men, Women and Dogs .

James Thurber is universally admired for his hilarious sense of humour, off-beat imagination, and unique take on the world around him. "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty", in which a young man's fantasies have a much more powerful hold on him than reality, is probably his best-known prose work but this selection also contains wonderfully entertaining essays, poetry and cartoons gathered from all of Thurber's collections. Poking fun at his own weaknesses and those of other people (and dogs) - the English teacher who looked only at figures of speech, the Airedale who refused to include him in the family, the botany lecturer who despaired of him totally - James Thurber is essential reading for everyone who loves to laugh.

Confusion reigns on the island of Ooroo when the letter O is banished.

“If this book isn’t a minor classic—and one uses the term ‘minor’ only because it is so gorgeously funny and not ponderous enough to be a major—well, one doesn’t know what book is. Let’s compromise and just call it a classic.” --Will Cuppy, New York Herald Tribune The first book of prose published by either James Thurber or E. B. White, Is Sex Necessary? combines the humor and genius of both authors to examine those great mysteries of life—romance, love, and marriage. A masterpiece of drollery, this 75th Anniversary Edition stands the test of time with its sidesplitting spoof of men, women, and psychologists; more than fifty funny illustrations by Thurber; and a foreword by John Updike.

James Thurber reported the world as he saw it. But what a world! Only Thurber could picture a seal peering nearsightedly over a headboard or a former husband crouched atop the armoire. Titles in this selection, all vintage Thurber, hint at the range of his whimsy and include "Courtship Through the Ages," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "Interview with a Lemming" and "You Know How the French Are." "Few writers have re-created daydreams and nightmares as Thurber re-creates them. He manages, somehow, to pin them while the nerve filaments are alive and wriggling...." (The New York Times)

From iconic American humorist James Thurber, a celebrated and poignant memoir about his years at The New Yorker with the magazine’s unforgettable founder and longtime editor, Harold Ross “Extremely entertaining. . . . life at The New Yorker emerges as a lovely sort of pageant of lunacy, of practical jokes, of feuds and foibles. It is an affectionate picture of scamps playing their games around a man who, for all his brusqueness, loved them, took care of them, pampered and scolded them like an irascible mother hen.” —New York Times With a foreword by Adam Gopnik and illustrations by James Thurber At the helm of America’s most influential literary magazine from 1925 to 1951, Harold Ross introduced the country to a host of exciting talent, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Ogden Nash, Peter Arno, Charles Addams, and Dorothy Parker. But no one could have written about this irascible, eccentric genius more affectionately or more critically than James Thurber, whose portrait of Ross captures not only a complex literary giant but a historic friendship and a glorious era as well. "If you get Ross down on paper," warned Wolcott Gibbs to Thurber," nobody will ever believe it." But readers of this unforgettable memoir will find that they do. Offering a peek into the lives of two American literary giants and the New York literary scene at its heyday, The Years with Ross is a true classic, and a testament to the enduring influence of their genius.

Here is a Thurber world of enchanted deer and seven-headed dragons, of wizards and witches, of riddles and spells, of false love and true. It is the story of a beautiful princess, transformed from a deer, who assigns each of three princes a perilous labor to perform in order to win her hand. Drawings by the Author.

This book is a collection of Fables and Poems by James Thurber and is a first edition copyright 1940.

James Thurber was the unique, unpredictable wild card of American humorists, at once whimsical fantasist and deadpan chronicler of everyday absurdities. The comic persona he invented, a modern citydweller whose zaniest flights of free association are tinged with anxiety, is as hilarious now as when he first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker—and his troubled side is even more striking. Here, The Library of America presents the best and most extensive Thurber collection ever assembled.Only a book of this scope can do justice to Thurber’s extraordinary career and to the many unexpected turns of his comic genius. Here are the acknowledged masterpieces: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “The Catbird Seat,” the anti-war parable The Last Flower, the brilliantly satirical Fables for Our Time, the children’s classic The 13 Clocks, and My Life and Hard Times, which Russell Baker calls “possibly the shortest and most elegant autobiography ever written.” Here too are the best pieces from The Owl in the Attic, Let Your Mind Alone!, My World—And Welcome To It, and The Beast in Me and Other Animals. From his other famous collections are included such favorites as “The Pet Department,” “The Black Magic of Barney Haller,” "Nine Needles,’ “the Macbeth Murder Mystery,” and “File and Forget,” revealing an astonishingly diverse mix of literary parodies, eccentric portraits, stories of domestic warfare and inner terror, reminiscences both tender and farcical, extravagant feats of wordplay, freewheeling burlesques of popular culture (from detective novels to self-help fads), and exasperated protests against the mechanized impersonality of the modern world.Thurber’s wonderful drawings—spontaneous creations of which he once said, “I don’t think any drawing ever took me more than three minutes”—are here in profusion, with their population of husbands, wives, dogs, seals, and various species of Thurber’s own invention. His first great cartoon collection, The Seal in the Bedroom, is presented complete, along with such celebrated sequences like “The Masculine Approach” and “The War Between Men and Women,” and his devastatingly straightforward illustrated versions of once-canonical poems such as “Barbara Frietchie” and “Excelsior.”Rounding out this volume is a selection from The Years with Ross, his memoir of New Yorker publisher Harold Ross, and a number of pieces, previously uncollected by Thurber, including some early work never before reprinted.

Short story first published in The New Yorker, Nov. 14, 1942.Mr. Martin, a man of exemplary habits, planned to murder Mrs. Barrows, the special adviser to the president of his firm. The woman had disrupted the system; caused people to be fired, and generally gotten the place into a state of confusion. His carefully laid plan to murder her didn't work out, but by visiting her apartment and behaving himself in an "unseemly" manner, as she reported to the president, he managed to get her out of the firm and possibly into an insane asylum.

Explores the charming world of Thurber's hounds as recorded in his prose and drawings

This classic collection of Thurber's humor includes the twenty-six pieces published in The New Yorker that turned the writer into a legend in which the humorist explored such topics as the complexities of relationships between men and women and his correspondence with his publishers. 15,000 first printing.

Originally published in November 1939, two months after World War II officially began, James Thurber's parable in pictures-- a graphic novel ahead of its day--about eternal cycles of war, peace, love, and the resilience of one little flower remains as relevant today as it was then. The New York Times called it "at once one of the most serious and one of the most hilarious contributions on war." Civilization has collapsed after World War XII, dogs have deserted their masters, all the groves and gardens have been destroyed, and love has vanished from the earth. Then one day, "a young girl who had never seen a flower chanced to come upon the last one in the world." Written among the sorrow and chaos of war, dedicated to this only child " in the wistful hope that her world will be better than mine." The new printing will feature new scans of Thurber's original 1939 drawings.

Gorgeously illustrated and including two gatefolds that give us a panoramic jungle at war, The Tiger Who Would Be King is as entertaining as it is wise, as wry as it is passionate. Yoon's humorous images support this beautifully written text with wit and insight. Her final portrait of the tiger in a sea of silence will stay with the reader for a long, long time.JooHee Yoon is an illustrator and printmaker. She strives to create picture books that can be enjoyed by people of all ages.James Thurber joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1927. His contributions to that magazine, both as a writer and an artist, were instrumental in changing the character of American humor.

Gathers humorous stories, essays, and drawings about the battle between the sexes, marriage, pets, and the trials of modern life

The Thirteen Clocks is a mixture of fairy tale, parable, and poetry. It has everything to please everybody. There is a princess in distress, a prince in disguise, a wicked uncle, and a last minute race between good and evil which is as exciting as any thriller. James Thurber wrote it, when he was supposed to be writing something quite different, because he couldn’t help himself, which must be why it bubbles with gaiety and wit, and why everybody who has read it immediately wants to read it all over again.The Wonderful O, the second story in this book, is about two abominable villains, a man with a map and a man with a ship, who sail to the island of Coroo in search of treasure and, when they can’t find it, revenge themselves on the gentle inhabitants by banning everything with an O in it. First they take the O’s out of all the words and then they start forbidding such things as dogs, cottages, coconuts, and dolls. They are just getting round to forbidding mothers when the islanders decide there are four things with an O in them that must not be lost. Three of them are ‘hope’, and ‘love’ and ‘valour’. The fourth and most important is really the whole point of The Wonderful O, which is a wonderful book.

Book by Thurber, James

A collection of short humorous pieces, most of which appeared in The New Yorker.Part One: Mr and Mrs MonroeA number of short stories featuring the Mr and Mrs Monroe and which contain many autobiographical elements.Part Two: The Pet DepartmentInspired by the daily pet column in the New York Evening Post and consisting of a number of short question and answers, each illustrated by a Thurber drawing.Part Three: Ladies and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English UsageInspired by Mr. H. W. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

Subtitled "A Collection of Short Pieces, Mainly Humourous But with a Few Kind of Sad Ones Mixed in with Drawings by the Author".Darker in tone than "My Life and Hard Times", "The Middle-Aged Man" draws on Thurber's troubled marriage for material. The humor is ridden with pathos, and yet is quite sharp. This collection has 36 stories including: "The Gentleman is Cold," "Everything is Wild," "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife," "Hell Only Breaks Loose Once," "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox," and "How to See a Bad Play." The London Times said, "There may be greater humorists writing in America today than James Thurber, but none with quite his individual touch and his flavor."

A toy maker only five feet tall cleverly outwits a giant who threatens to devastate his village

A collection of humorous essays, accompanied by the author's own bizarre drawings, presenting Thurber's unremitting retort to the multitude of "self-help" books which were widespread in the 1930s and whose successors are still with us today.

The Unicorn in the Garden, the most famous of Thurber's humorous modern fables, first appeared in The New Yorker on October 31, 1939; and was first collected in his book Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (Harper and Brothers, 1940). The fable has since been reprinted in The Thurber Carnival (Harper and Brothers, 1945), James Thurber: Writings and Drawings, The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, and other publications. It is taught in literature and rhetoric courses.

"The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man," says Thurber. But anyway he (Thurber, that is) here continues the study, fooling no one by putting it in the form of fables. People who already know everything there is to know about people shouldn't bother reading this book. Others need it badly.

A book of drawings by James Thurber.

"My father was in the hospital and every night when I visited him, I read aloud to him. James Thurber. And one night he said, 'You really should do that on your show,' and I said, 'Dad, it's a television newscast. I'd love to, but how could it possibly fit?' And he said, 'How often have I ever suggested anything for your shows?' And I remembered that he never had. But I also reminded him that there were things like copyrights and bills, to which he said, 'Try it. You never know.'"I began to read Thurber once a week on television, and continue to do so whenever and wherever I can. I'm happy to say this has sparked a mini-revival, which I hope erupts into a full-scale newfound appreciation for a man whose writings are nearly perfect. He did not intend them to be read aloud, but they are ideally suited for the task: clean, economical, vivid, full of crashes and thuds - and silences, too. And for that matter, they make wonderful tributes to memories - memories of my dad, and Rosemary Thurber's." —Keith Olbermann, May 19, 2011Stories included in The James Thurber Audio Collection: "There's No Place Like Home", "The Bear Who Let It Alone", "The Greatest Man in the World", "The Night the Ghost Got In", "I Went to Sullivant", "The Unicorn in the Garden", "How to Relax While Broadcasting", "The Tortoise and the Hare", "A Box to Hide In", "The Owl Who Was God", "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox", "The Moth and the Star", "The Dog That Bit People", "The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery", "The Little Girl and the Wolf", "The Macbeth Murder Mystery", "The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble", "The Night the Bed Fell", "Sex Ex Machina", "The Scotty Who Knew Too Much", "The Car We Had to Push", and "The Peacelike Mongoose".©1956 Rosemary A. Thurber; (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers

These twenty-three humorous stories and essays and more than one hundred illustrations find James Thurber in absolutely top form. The book concludes with a sampling of articles Thurber wrote for the New Yorker’s “The Talk of the Town,” demonstrating his often overlooked skill as a reporter.Mainly men and women : My friend Domesticus --The glass of fashion --Am not I your Rosalind? --The princess and the tin box --How to name a dog --Thix --The waters of the moon --Exhibit X --The lady on the bookcase --The ordeal of Mr. Matthews --The dewey dewey fog --A guide to the literary pilgrimage --Prehistoric animals of the middle west --Here come the tigers --Look homeward, Jeannie --A call on Mrs. Forrester --The beast in the dingle. Less alarming creatures : A new natural history --Extinct animals of Bermuda --A gallery of real creatures. Soapland : O pioneers! --Ivorytown, Rinsoville, Anacinburg, and Crisco Corners --Sculptors in ivory --The invisible people --The listening women