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Like Mother Used To Make
"Like Mother Used to Make" is a short story by Shirley Jackson. It was originally published in the 1949 short story collection '' The Lottery and Other Stories'' by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It contains the second appearance of James Harris, a recurring character in the collection. Plot Summary The story begins with David, a very fastidious man, buying butter and rolls at the store. He then goes home to prepare dinner for himself and his neighbor, Marcia, who he invited. Worried that Marcia might forget about his invitation, he invites himself into her empty apartment to leave a note. Her home is cluttered and dirty, the opposite of David's. He takes great pride in his home, which is very clean and carefully arranged with matching furniture. He is especially proud of his silverware set, which he carefully unboxes and sets on the table. During the dinner, Marcia's coworker, Mr. Harris, comes to call on her and she invites him into David's apartment without asking permiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shirley Jackson
Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two memoirs, and more than 200 short stories. Born in San Francisco, California, Jackson attended Syracuse University in New York, where she became involved with the university's literary magazine and met her future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman. After they graduated, the couple moved to New York and began contributing to '' The New Yorker,'' with Jackson as a fiction writer and Hyman as a contributor to "Talk of the Town". The couple settled in North Bennington, Vermont, in 1945, after the birth of their first child, when Hyman joined the faculty of Bennington College. After publishing her debut novel '' The Road Through the Wall'' (1948), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood in California, Jackson gained significant public atte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Lottery And Other Stories
''The Lottery and Other Stories'' is a 1949 short story collection by American author Shirley Jackson. Published by Farrar, Straus, it includes "The Lottery" and 24 other stories. This was the only collection of her stories to appear during her lifetime. Her later posthumous collections were ''Come Along with Me'' (Viking, 1968), edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman, and ''Just an Ordinary Day'' (Bantam, 1995) and ''Let Me Tell You'' (Random House, 2015), edited by her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart. Jackson's original title for this collection was ''The Lottery or, The Adventures of James Harris''. Characters named James Harris appear in the stories "The Daemon Lover," "Like Mother Used to Make," "Elizabeth" and "Of Course." Other characters with the surname Harris appear or are referenced in "The Villager," "The Renegade," "Flower Garden," "A Fine Old Firm" and "Seven Types of Ambiguity." The collection also contains a short excerpt from the traditional ballad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Founding Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945 by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. The first book was ''Yank: The G.I. Story of the War'', a compilation of articles that appeared in '' Yank, the Army Weekly'', then ''There Were Two Pirates'', a novel by James Branch Cabell. The first years of existence were rough until they published the diet book ''Look Younger, Live Longer'' by Gayelord Hauser in 1950. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for a while. In the early years, Straus and his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Edgar Hyman
Stanley Edgar Hyman (June 11, 1919 – July 29, 1970) was an American literary critic who wrote primarily about critical methods: the distinct strategies critics use in approaching literary texts. He was the husband of writer Shirley Jackson. Life Hyman was born in Brooklyn, the son of Moe Hyman, and raised Orthodox Jewish. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1940, where he met Shirley Jackson. After reading one of Jackson's stories, Hyman declared that he was going to marry the author. They had four children together. He was a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' for much of his life, and although he did not possess a graduate degree, taught at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. From 1961 to 1965, Hyman was the literary critic of ''The New Leader''. He did not believe in monogamy and had numerous affairs during their marriage, often with his students. According to Shirley Jackson's biographers, her marriage was plagued by Hyman's infidelities, notably with his forme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shapeshifting
In mythology, folklore and speculative fiction, shape-shifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through an inherently superhuman ability, divine intervention, demonic manipulation, sorcery, spells or having inherited the ability. The idea of shape-shifting is in the oldest forms of totemism and shamanism, as well as the oldest existent literature and epic poems such as the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' and the ''Iliad''. The concept remains a common literary device in modern fantasy, children's literature and popular culture. Folklore and mythology Popular shape-shifting creatures in folklore are werewolves and vampires (mostly of European, Canadian, and Native American/early American origin), ichchadhari naag and ichchadhari naagin (shape-shifting cobras) of India, the huli jing of East Asia (including the Japanese ''kitsune'' and Korean ''kumiho''), and the gods, goddesses, and demons and demonesses like succubus and incubus and other numerous mythologies, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Daemon Lover
"The Daemon Lover" (Roud 14, Child 243) – also known as "James Harris", "A Warning for Married Women", "The Distressed Ship Carpenter", "James Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest known broadside version of the ballad was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657. History and different versions There are a number of different versions of the ballad. In addition to the eight collected by Francis James Child in volume IV of his anthology ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'' (versions A to H), others can be found in Britain and in the United States, where it remained especially widespread, with hundreds of versions being collected throughout the years, around 250 of them in print. In comparison, only four new variants were recorded in the UK in the time between Child's death in 1896 and the second half of the 1960s, all of them befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1949 Short Stories
Events January * January 1 – A United Nations-sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The war results in a stalemate and the division of Kashmir, which still continues as of 2022. * January 2 – Luis Muñoz Marín becomes the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. * January 11 – The first "networked" television broadcasts take place, as KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania goes on the air, connecting east coast and mid-west programming in the United States. * January 16 – Şemsettin Günaltay forms the new government of Turkey. It is the 18th government, last single party government of the Republican People's Party. * January 17 – The first VW Type 1 to arrive in the United States, a 1948 model, is brought to New York by Dutch businessman Ben Pon. Unable to interest dealers or importers in the Volkswagen, Pon sells the sample car to pay his travel expenses. Only two 1949 models are sold in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
