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Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
"[Rawlings is] among the first ten American story writers today."
—The New Republic, 1940
"She will help to make the American short story a living part of our literature."
—Boston Transcript, 1940
"One of the two or three sui generis storytellers we have."
—Atlantic Monthly, 1940
In The Yearling, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the bleak but noble life of the Florida Cracker into American hearts. She secured her popularity as a storyteller and her status as a major voice in American literature in 1942 with the instant success of Cross Creek, the autobiographical vignettes that highlight her ability to create short fiction.
Still, no assessment of the full range and power of her talent has been possible without this volume of all twenty-three of her published short stories, collected together here for the first time. Most appeared in Scribner's Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post.
Scribner's printed Rawlings's first short story, "Cracker Chidlings," in 1931, just three years after she moved to an orange grove in the backwoods of north-central Florida. With a mix of frontier morality, ingenuity, and humor, the story introduced readers to Fatty Blake's squirrel pilau and 'Shiner Tim's corn liquor. Just as important, it brought her work to the attention of Maxwell Perkins, the famous Scribner's editor, who recognized her talent for storytelling and her eye for detail and who encouraged her to capture human drama in more "Cracker" stories.
Though Rawlings was at home in a man's world, much of her short fiction is told in a woman's voice. She is merciless in "Gal Young 'Un" as she bores in on two women, both competing for the same man and struggling for their dignity. The story, published in Harper's, was awarded the O. Henry Memorial Prize for best short story of 1932 and was made into a prize-winning movie in 1979. Her most autobiographical story, "A Mother in Mannville," describes the sense of personal loss endured by a childless woman writer.
Often at her best combining satire and sarcasm, Rawlings wrote a series of comic stories that featured Quincey Dover, her alter ego. "She is, of course, me," Rawlings wrote, "if I had been born in the Florida backwoods and weighed nearly three hundred pounds." One story Quincey narrates, "Benny and the Bird Dogs," reportedly amused Robert Frost so much that he fell off a rocking chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter while listening to Rawlings read from it.
Like others who wrote about the South, Rawlings grappled with the problem of how to portray honestly, yet without racism, the situation and the language of her neighbors. Her empathetic description of blacks and her portrayal of the Florida Cracker contribute a valuable perspective on twentieth-century American culture in transition.
—The New Republic, 1940
"She will help to make the American short story a living part of our literature."
—Boston Transcript, 1940
"One of the two or three sui generis storytellers we have."
—Atlantic Monthly, 1940
In The Yearling, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the bleak but noble life of the Florida Cracker into American hearts. She secured her popularity as a storyteller and her status as a major voice in American literature in 1942 with the instant success of Cross Creek, the autobiographical vignettes that highlight her ability to create short fiction.
Still, no assessment of the full range and power of her talent has been possible without this volume of all twenty-three of her published short stories, collected together here for the first time. Most appeared in Scribner's Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the Saturday Evening Post.
Scribner's printed Rawlings's first short story, "Cracker Chidlings," in 1931, just three years after she moved to an orange grove in the backwoods of north-central Florida. With a mix of frontier morality, ingenuity, and humor, the story introduced readers to Fatty Blake's squirrel pilau and 'Shiner Tim's corn liquor. Just as important, it brought her work to the attention of Maxwell Perkins, the famous Scribner's editor, who recognized her talent for storytelling and her eye for detail and who encouraged her to capture human drama in more "Cracker" stories.
Though Rawlings was at home in a man's world, much of her short fiction is told in a woman's voice. She is merciless in "Gal Young 'Un" as she bores in on two women, both competing for the same man and struggling for their dignity. The story, published in Harper's, was awarded the O. Henry Memorial Prize for best short story of 1932 and was made into a prize-winning movie in 1979. Her most autobiographical story, "A Mother in Mannville," describes the sense of personal loss endured by a childless woman writer.
Often at her best combining satire and sarcasm, Rawlings wrote a series of comic stories that featured Quincey Dover, her alter ego. "She is, of course, me," Rawlings wrote, "if I had been born in the Florida backwoods and weighed nearly three hundred pounds." One story Quincey narrates, "Benny and the Bird Dogs," reportedly amused Robert Frost so much that he fell off a rocking chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter while listening to Rawlings read from it.
Like others who wrote about the South, Rawlings grappled with the problem of how to portray honestly, yet without racism, the situation and the language of her neighbors. Her empathetic description of blacks and her portrayal of the Florida Cracker contribute a valuable perspective on twentieth-century American culture in transition.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
386 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 1994
7 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
81 books737 followersPeople know American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for her novel
The Yearling
(1938).
This author lived in rural Florida with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same title, The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
This author lived in rural Florida with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same title, The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 21, 2022
i read gal young un for one of my classes and oh my goodness i LOVED it! i can’t fully explain what it was about it that i loved so much so explanation (maybe) to come.
February 28, 2024
4.5. Some stories were standouts. Shes a great writer.
January 14, 2009
These stories may seem dry to some, but I found them quite delightful. My favorite was "Gal Yung Uhn," it was something that I definitely didn't expect to read from Rawlings.
November 24, 2016
Finally finished this lengthy compilation of short stories from cover to cover, having read many of them piecemeal already or in When the Whippoorwill. My favorites all came at the end of the collection and were written in the early 1940s - "The Enemy," "The Provider," "The Shell," "Miss Moffatt Steps Out." I taught "The Black Secret" in my literature course this semester, and it also falls in this period. They touched so deeply on the despair and ability to have truths of life uncovered through experiences with others. In these later stories, a woman and her servants come to acknowledge that the man with the killer hands is no more than a gardener unable to escape the way that he looks, a coal shoveler on a train creates a fantasy life with a family he passes on his route each week, a beautiful but mentally challenged woman faces the loss of her husband in war, and a lonely schoolteacher braves the world outside her apartment in an attempt to engage with others in a meaningful way. My favorite passages:
"A man's thoughts, a man's dreams - Why, they were thoughts and dreams, and there there was a long bridge between them and the world of fact. He had never thought about other people, except his mother and the mythical folk of the movies. He wondered now if all men dreamed and found the pain of this bridge separating the dream from the reality . . . Surely a man in his loneliness and his great need might cross that bridge. Surely he could find his own and come to them. He tucked the envelope carefully in his pocket and set out southward in the sunset."
"The shell was worthless, and had been even when there was life within it. But it was a pretty little thing and it was a pity that it should be quite destroyed."
"A man's thoughts, a man's dreams - Why, they were thoughts and dreams, and there there was a long bridge between them and the world of fact. He had never thought about other people, except his mother and the mythical folk of the movies. He wondered now if all men dreamed and found the pain of this bridge separating the dream from the reality . . . Surely a man in his loneliness and his great need might cross that bridge. Surely he could find his own and come to them. He tucked the envelope carefully in his pocket and set out southward in the sunset."
"The shell was worthless, and had been even when there was life within it. But it was a pretty little thing and it was a pity that it should be quite destroyed."
September 12, 2025
The most startling observation about this collection of stories is how varied they are. Yes, the theme is the culture of backwoods people of the 1930s and 1940s, mostly in Florida, but the characters and their problems/challenges range over a large spectrum. I was most touched by A Mother in Mannville, among the shortest, and set outside Florida. The rest are meaningful or not, but one has to read them all to learn which is which.
Marjorie Rawlings possessed a power of observation perhaps matched only by Mark Twain. Her writing is different from his, but is equally penetrating. The memorable characters of their respective stories may be unique to their settings, but are universal—and poignant—enough to be recognized by careful readers.
Thank you to Rodger Tarr and the University Press of Florida for collecting these previously published short stories from popular magazines of yesterday into a single volume for 20th- and 21st-century fans of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
Marjorie Rawlings possessed a power of observation perhaps matched only by Mark Twain. Her writing is different from his, but is equally penetrating. The memorable characters of their respective stories may be unique to their settings, but are universal—and poignant—enough to be recognized by careful readers.
Thank you to Rodger Tarr and the University Press of Florida for collecting these previously published short stories from popular magazines of yesterday into a single volume for 20th- and 21st-century fans of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
July 12, 2018
This was nighttime reading. One short story between novels at night. A good way to appreciate short stories.
April 5, 2024
I am not worthy. This book will touch your innermost feelings and make you a better person.
September 21, 2013
Well known as the author of The Yearling and South Moon Under, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was equally capable at the art of the short story as she was for her novels and autobiographic writing (Cross Creek). The varied yarns are crisp works that feature her irony, winsomeness, wit and keen eye for detail. However, what is most beautifully rendered are her picturesque depictions of the lives of the backwoods folks who live in the scrub and hammocks of central Florida.
In such a hard scrabble existence, conniving is often a used attribute from the human personality. However used it may be repercussions often follow suite, as evidenced in the first story "Cracker Chidlings" whereby a slick willy character named Colonel Buxtom takes advantage of a widow in order to steal her property, but he gets his comeuppance for his own folly. Then there is "Jacob's Ladder" a wonderful story depicting the lives of Florry and Mart, two inexperienced youths who march out into the rough and tumble world which they are ill equipped to handle. What they do have is their love for each other and their simple value system, which gives them their profound dignity. This is not a tale of man against nature, but rather, man against man, and who cannot identify with that struggle? Mart and Florry are pummeled by man and nature and with the loss of their baby, but they do carry on. And in the end, they come back to Florry's broken down cabin in the woods. A compromise must be agreed to, and it is eventually reached.
All the tales have a deep rooted earthiness to it, whether it stems from the pleasure of cockfighting, as in the story "Cocks Must Crow" or the struggles of getting a successful bean crop to grow as in "A Crop of Beans." The characters are not endowed with the accoutrements of a luxurious lifestyle, for more often than not, they are struggling for their very lives, but it is their unity as couples against the vanity and materialism of society that makes them all so noble. They have their priorities in place and no matter haw rattled they may get with hunger, varmints, dire poverty and corrupted outside influences, their inherent down-to-earth stick-to-it attitude makes them somehow prevail against the ills of an opportunistic society. And the latter element does breach into the raw Florida wilderness more often than not. It even overpowers the characters, too.
Each story is a classic literary gem, and it is understandable why many writers at the time applauded Rawlings for her shorter fiction, for she did bring the form back into the national literature. Though here themes are universal, and that is how she liked to be viewed, to me, she will always be a regional writer, like Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. There is a lot to see in a hamlet, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawling really did put the people and environment of Cross Creek under a loving microscope.
In such a hard scrabble existence, conniving is often a used attribute from the human personality. However used it may be repercussions often follow suite, as evidenced in the first story "Cracker Chidlings" whereby a slick willy character named Colonel Buxtom takes advantage of a widow in order to steal her property, but he gets his comeuppance for his own folly. Then there is "Jacob's Ladder" a wonderful story depicting the lives of Florry and Mart, two inexperienced youths who march out into the rough and tumble world which they are ill equipped to handle. What they do have is their love for each other and their simple value system, which gives them their profound dignity. This is not a tale of man against nature, but rather, man against man, and who cannot identify with that struggle? Mart and Florry are pummeled by man and nature and with the loss of their baby, but they do carry on. And in the end, they come back to Florry's broken down cabin in the woods. A compromise must be agreed to, and it is eventually reached.
All the tales have a deep rooted earthiness to it, whether it stems from the pleasure of cockfighting, as in the story "Cocks Must Crow" or the struggles of getting a successful bean crop to grow as in "A Crop of Beans." The characters are not endowed with the accoutrements of a luxurious lifestyle, for more often than not, they are struggling for their very lives, but it is their unity as couples against the vanity and materialism of society that makes them all so noble. They have their priorities in place and no matter haw rattled they may get with hunger, varmints, dire poverty and corrupted outside influences, their inherent down-to-earth stick-to-it attitude makes them somehow prevail against the ills of an opportunistic society. And the latter element does breach into the raw Florida wilderness more often than not. It even overpowers the characters, too.
Each story is a classic literary gem, and it is understandable why many writers at the time applauded Rawlings for her shorter fiction, for she did bring the form back into the national literature. Though here themes are universal, and that is how she liked to be viewed, to me, she will always be a regional writer, like Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. There is a lot to see in a hamlet, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawling really did put the people and environment of Cross Creek under a loving microscope.
October 30, 2013
I have never enjoyed short stories until I read these. She is a wonderful writer and truly captured the spirit of the backwoods "crackers" of Central Florida. My favorite story was The Provider.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews