Jean Stafford

A provocative story of class struggle, privilege, and poverty that put American author Jean Stafford on the map. Boston Adventure is the haunting story of a girl in flight from her impoverished childhood. Sonia Marburg--growing up in a village outside Boston, deserted by her father, and burdened with an insane mother--dreams that life can hold nothing better than the imagined splendor of Beacon Hill. When she becomes the prot g e of a wealthy Bostonian, her dream is achieved, and with it comes the revelation of an empty, decadent society.

Introduced by Hilton Als, in 'one of the best novels about adolescence in American literature' (New York Times) two siblings come of age in a mountainous wilderness ...'One of the strangest and angriest novels of the twentieth century.' Lauren Groff'An extraordinary, savage novel.' Olivia Laing'I love this novel.' Patricia LockwoodShe would not feel safe until the beautiful animal was dead.Ralph and Molly are inseparable siblings: united against the stupidity of daily routines, their prim mother and prissy older sisters, the world of adult authority. One summer, they are sent from their childhood home in suburban Los Angeles to their uncle's Colorado mountain ranch, where they write, hunt, roam. But this untamed wilderness soon becomes tainted by dark stirrings of sexual desire - and as the pressures of growing up drive an irrevocable rift between them, their innocent childhoods hurtle towards a devastating end . . .'Beautiful, and sensitive, and quickening.' Eileen Myles'A glimmer of genius.' Rumaan Alam'Breathtakingly original.' Tessa Hadley'A brilliant achievement [to] set beside Carson McCullers's masterwork The Member of the Wedding.' Joyce Carol Oates

For the first time, the complete stories of a Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the form, plus her fascinating portrait of the mother one of the world's most infamous assassins Jean Stafford (1915-1979) ranks with John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Peter Taylor, and Katherine Anne Porter as a 20th-century master of the American short story. This Library of America volume collects for the first time all 45 stories Stafford published in her lifetime as well as the posthumous Woden's Day, and includes The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, which won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as fifteen stories currently unavailable in print, twelve of which have never been published in book form. Set mainly in Germany, New England, Colorado, and New York City, her stories combine an exacting eye for physical detail with acute psychological insight, examining the lives of her mostly female protagonists as they seek a sense of place and belonging in the face of restlessness, dislocation, isolation, and powerlessness. Among her most well-known stories are The Interior Castle, an excruciating exploration of an accident victim's physical and psychological pain; Bad Characters, a delightful account of a young girl's misdeeds in Colorado; Children Are Bored on Sunday, a merciless satire of New York intellectual and artistic life in the Partisan Review era; and An Influx of Poets, inspired by her tumultuous marriage to the poet Robert Lowell. As a special feature, the volume also includes A Mother in History (1966), Stafford's controversial journalistic profile of Marguerite Oswald, the mother of President Kennedy's accused assassin. With meticulous precision Stafford records Marguerite's bizarre arguments in defense of her son's innocence while offering a chilling portrait of an utterly self-absorbed individual.

"A lighthearted concoction of extraordinary events, told with affection and humor." The New York Times. Elephi Pelephi, the clever hero of this charming tale, is a lonely cat in need of a playmate. When he spies an abandoned Fiat outside his Fifth Avenue apartment, Elephi devises a rescue that leads to comic confusion and a suprising new friendship. Extraordinary illustrations accompany this classic delight from the winner of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction."

Eight-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother Ralph are inseparable, in league with each other against the stodgy and stupid routines of school and daily life; against their prim mother and prissy older sisters; against the world of authority and perhaps the world itself. One summer they are sent from the genteel Los Angeles suburb that is their home to backcountry Colorado, where their uncle Claude has a ranch. There the children encounter an enchanting new world--savage, direct, beautiful, untamed--to which, over the next few years, they will return regularly, enjoying a delicious double life. And yet at the same time this other sphere, about which they are both so passionate, threatens to come between their passionate attachment to each other. Molly dreams of growing up to be a writer, yet clings ever more fiercely to the special world of childhood. Ralph for his part feels the growing challenge, and appeal, of impending manhood. Youth and innocence are hurtling toward a devastating end.

These Pulitzer Prize-winning stories represent the major short works of fiction by one of the most distinctively American stylists of her day. Jean Stafford communicates the small details of loneliness and connection, the search for freedom and the desire to belong, that not only illuminate whole lives but also convey with an elegant economy of words the sense of the place and time in which her protagonists find themselves. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford includes the acclaimed story "An Influx of Poets," which has never before appeared in book form.