Ring W. Lardner's The Big Town follows a dryly comic Midwestern husband whose unexpected inheritance from his wife Ella's stepfather sends the family from modest South Bend into a whirl of money, ambition, and social pretension. With Ella and her sister Katie eager to trade restraint for glamour, the narrator watches their hopes for dresses, parties, and a suitable husband for Katie collide with the awkward realities of class and small-town life. A disastrous social gathering and a disappo...

Ring W. Lardner's comic narrator treats turning 35 as both a crisis and a joke, delivering a mock-serious guide to middle age filled with slang, self-mockery, and sharp observations about masculinity. He riffs on age, marriage, children, hair loss, drinking, and the absurdity of people acting as if 35 is ancient, while also teasing his own name, vanity, and social awkwardness. As he invents "research" about mortality and domestic life, he argues that marriage and middle age somehow make a ...

Nina Wilcox Putnam turns marriage into a fast, funny battleground of memory, manners, and mutual exasperation. Prompted by a publisher's dare and her husband George's alarmed objections, she delivers a sharp, conversational monologue that skewers husbands' bad grooming, repetitive stories, car trouble, and uncanny talent for making wives wait. But the satire stays affectionate, finding comedy in the ordinary give-and-take of domestic life. Putnam contrasts husbands' selective memory with w...

Of all sports, boxing has been the writers' favorite. Maybe it's because of his need for persistence and resilience, perhaps for the narratives of victory and defeat, perhaps even for the relatable solitude of the boxer who faces his challenge in the ring; boxing has inspired large pieces of fiction that enchanted generations. Through the eyes of consecrated authors you will meet the passionate world of boxing, in this seven short stories selected by Augst Nemo: A Piece of Steak by Jack Lo...

Ring Lardner has been one of America's most popular short story writers for nearly a century and here is his guide for any budding writers. This classic work was originally published in 1924 and is now being republished here with a brand new introductory biography of the author.

Discover the literary genius of Ring Lardner in "7 Best Short Stories". This book presents a superb selection of the best stories by the renowned American writer, known for his sharp humor and keen observations on everyday life and the world of sports. With unforgettable characters and engaging plots, Lardner captures the complexities and nuances of human relationships and daily experiences. His ability to combine humor and depth offers the reader a unique literary experience, provoking bo...

We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation ? Ring Lardner was a prolific 20th century American humorist and journalist best known for his baseball stories and reportage, whose corpus nevertheless spans a wide range of genres and styles. He began his professional career as a sports reporter, but his literary career began in earnest in 1913 when he took over the C...

The arrogant, proud, and mostly illiterate Jack Keefe of Bedford, Indiana had already established a career pitching for the minor league baseball club in Terre Haute. His strong pitching arm attracted the attention of Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and before he knew it, Keefe had been signed to play for the team. Through the ups and downs of his life, from his baseball career, to his marriage and family, to his service in World War I and his eventual return to baseball, Jack Kee...

In 1917, Ring Lardner was sent on assignment as a war correspondent on the French front for a series of reports for Collier's magazine. Appearing in serialized format in the magazine before its eventual publication as a book, My Four Weeks in France recalls Lardner's experiences in his new wartime role. Being a humorist and a satirist, it would have been inconsistent with his typical format to write harrowing stories about the horrors of combat. For this reason, this book instead consists ...

Ring Lardner was one of the most prolific humorists of the early 20th century. While he was most famous for the frequent appearances of his short fiction in numerous popular magazines of the era, he was also a prolific writer of poetry. His daily column for the Chicago Tribune entitled "In the Wake of the News" was generally a sports news column, but oftentimes served as a platform to publish his poetry. Many of his more sentimental poems from this column—the ones written about his childre...

"Gullible's Travels, Etc." is a collection of satirical short stories by Ring Lardner, an American author known for his wit and keen social commentary. Published in 1917, the book contains humorous and often biting observations of American life and culture in the early 20th century. Lardner's work is characterized by its sharp dialogue, ironic humor, and a deep understanding of the American vernacular.Lardner uses the character of Gullible to explore various aspects of society, poking fun ...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...