Mother Knows Best

by Edna Ferber

Illustrated with Scenes from the Photoplay. Hinges loose, light rubbing and soiling, corners bumped.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

267 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.

Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.

Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Reviews

[Jennifer Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a good psychopathic horror story. Just goes to show you sometimes you actually can trust your mums.

[Lee Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tight little collection of eight short stories, mostly about first or second generation immigrants living in the big city (either New York or Chicago). None of them is particularly devastating or remarkable, but, being Ferber, there are still some little diamond turns of phrase here and there.