Buttered Side Down

Edna Ferber

Mar 2004 · Wildside Press

About this ebook

"And so," the story writers used to say, "they lived happily ever after." Um-m-m -- maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be more careful of her fingernails and grammar? After Puss in Boots had won wealth and a wife for his young master did not that gentleman often fume with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, refused to call on the lady of the former poor miller's son? It is a great risk to take with one's book-children. These stories make no such promises. They stop just short of the phrase of the old story writers, and end truthfully, thus: And so they lived. * This volume includes "The Frog and the Puddle," "The Man Who Came Back," "What She Wore," "A Bush League Hero," "The Kitchen Side of the Door," "One of the Old Girls," "Maymeys from Cuba," "The Leading Lady," "That Home-Town Feeling," "The Homely Heroine," "Sun Dried," and "Where the Car Turns at 18th."

About the author

Edna Ferber was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Aug. 15, 1885. She spent her early career as a reporter. In 1910, Everybody's Magazine published her short story, The Homely Heroine, set in Appleton, Wisconsin. Ferber's novel, Dawn O'Hara, the story of a newspaperwoman in Milwaukee, followed in 1911. She gained national attention for her series of Emma McChesney stories, tales of a traveling underskirt saleswoman that were published in national magazines. A play based on the stories, Our Mrs. McChesney, was produced in 1915, starring Ethel Barrymore. With collaborator George S. Kaufman, Ferber wrote acclaimed plays Dinner at Eight and The Royal Family. Ferber won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925 for So Big, the story of a woman raising a child on a truck farm outside of Chicago. Her best known books include Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant and Ice Palace. Show Boat was made into a classic movie and Broadway musical; the film version of Cimarron, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931. Ferber wrote two autobiographies, A Peculiar Treasure published in 1939 and A Kind of Magic in 1963. She died of cancer on April 16, 1968.