Complete Stories

Description

As this complete collection of her short stories demonstrates, Dorothy Parker’s talents extended far beyond brash one-liners and clever rhymes. Her stories not only bring to life the urban milieu that was her bailiwick but lay bare the uncertainties and disappointments of ordinary people living ordinary lives.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Complete StoriesIntroduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
Chronology
A Note on the Text

Stories
Such a Pretty Little Picture
Too Bad
Mr. Durant
A Certain Lady
The Wonderful Old Gentleman
Dialogue at Three in the Morning
The Last Tea
Oh! He’s Charming!
Travelogue
Little Curtis
The Sexes
Arrangement in Black and White
A Telephone Call
A Terrible Day Tomorrow
Just a Little One
The Mantle of Whistler
The Garter
New York to Detroit
Big Blonde
You Were Perfectly Fine
The Cradle of Civilization
But the One on the Right
Here We Are
Lady with a Lamp
Dusk Before Fireworks
A Young Woman in Green Lace
Horsie
Advice to the Little Peyton Girl
From the Diary of a New York Lady
Sentiment
Mrs. Carrington and Mrs. Crane
The Little Hours
The Waltz
The Road Home
Glory in the Daytime
Cousin Larry
Mrs. Hofstadter on Josephine Street
Clothe the Naked
Soldiers of the Republic
The Custard Heart
Song of the Shirt, 1941
The Standard of Living
The Lovely Leave
The Game
I Live on Your Visits
Lolita
The Banquet of Crow
The Bolt Behind the Blue

Sketches
Our Tuesday Club
As the Spirit Moves
A Dinner Party Anthology
A Summer Hotel Anthology
An Apartment House Anthology
Men I’m Not Married To
Welcome Home
Our Own Crowd
Professional Youth

Dorothy Parker was born in West End, New Jersey, in 1893 and grew up in New York, attending a Catholic convent school and Miss Dana’s School in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1916 she sold some of her poetry to the editor of Vogue, and was subsequently given an editorial position on the magazine, writing captions for fashion photographs and drawings. She then became drama critic of Vanity Fair and the central figure of the celebrated Algonquin Round Table.

Famous for her spoken wit, she showed the same trenchant commentary in her book reviews for The New Yorker and Esquire and in her poems and sketches. Her collection of poems included Not So Deep as a Well and Enough Rope, which became a bestseller; and her collections of stories included Here Lies. She also collaborated with Elmer Rice on a play, Close Harmony and with Arnaud d’Usseau on the play the Ladies of the Corridor. She herself had two Broadway plays written about her and was portrayed as a character in a third. Her cynicism and the concentration of her judgements were famous and she has been closely associated with modern urbane humour.

Her first husband was Edwin Pond Parker II, and although they were divorced some years later, she continued to use his name, which she much preferred to her own of Rothschild. Her second husband was an actor-writer Alan Campbell. They went to Hollywood as a writing team and went through a tempestuous marriage until his death in 1963, when Dorothy Parker returned to New York. She died in 1967.

Regina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. She is the editor of seven books, including The Penguin Book of Women’s Humor, and the author of four others. She writes frequently for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Hartford Courant.

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