Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-town LifeAbout this Edition: -Fully linked table of contents -Carefully edited for your e-reader and compared with original manuscript to preseve quality -New 2011 Chapter containing an introduction and analysis of plot, setting, characters, etc. About the Book: Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 short story cycle by the American author Sherwood Anderson. The work is structured around the life of protagonist George Willard from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandonment of Winesburg as a young man. It is set in the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio (not to be confused with the actual Winesburg) which is based loosely on the author's childhood memories of Clyde, Ohio. Mostly written from late 1915 to early 1916, with a few stories completed closer to publication, the cycle was "conceived as a complementary parts of a whole, centered in the background of a single community". The book is broken down into twenty two stories, with the first story, "The Book of the Grotesque" serving as an introduction. Stylistically, because of its emphasis on the psychological insights of characters over plot, and plain-spoken prose, Winesburg, Ohio is known as one of the earliest Modern novels. Winesburg, Ohio was received well by critics despite some reservations about its moral tone and unconventional storytelling. Though its reputation waned in the 1930s, it has since rebounded and is now considered one of the most influential portraits of pre-industrial small-town life in the United States. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Alice alleyway arms arose Art Wilson banker's wife became began chair county seat cried Curtis Hartman darkness David Doctor Parcival Doctor Reefy door dream Elmer Cowley Enoch Robinson ERNEST BOYD eyes face father felt fields floor George Willard girl gone grew hands Hardy house head Helen White horse Jesse Bentley John Hardy Kate Swift kissed laughed lived looked Louise Main Street marriage married Mary Hardy Medina County mind morning mother muttered ness never night Ohio pockets quiet road Seth Richmond Sherwood Anderson shoulders silence son's room staring stood stopped story street of Winesburg talked tall tell Theodore Dreiser thing thought Tom King took town trees trembled tried turned voice waited walked wanted Wash Williams whispered wife Willard House window Wine Creek Winesburg Eagle Wing Biddlebaum woman women words
Popular passages
Page 4 - That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.
Page 20 - Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.
Page 12 - I'll not ask him about his hands," he thought, touched by the memory of the terror he had seen in the man's eyes. "There's something wrong, but I don't want to know what it is. His hands have something to do with his fear of me and of everyone." And George Willard was right. Let us look briefly into the story of the hands. Perhaps our talking of them will arouse the poet who will tell the hidden wonder story of the influence for which the hands were but fluttering pennants of promise.
Page 287 - Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he bec'omes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the...
Page 297 - I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt. In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night of the late fall. Farm horses jogged away along lonely country roads pulling their portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and further down Main Street the fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated and worked...
Page 36 - I can't even talk to father about it. I don't try. There isn't any use. I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think." Silence fell upon the room where the boy and woman sat together. Again, as on the other evenings, they were embarrassed. After a time the boy tried again to talk. "I suppose it won't be for a year or two but I've been thinking about it," he said, rising and going toward the door.
Page 13 - He was one of those rare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men. And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders...
Page v - TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER EMMA SMITH ANDERSON Whose keen observations on the life about her first awoke in me the hunger to see beneath the surface of lives, this book is dedicated.
Page 246 - Richmond will remember the incident quite vividly because, although everyone in our town said that the old man would go straight to hell and that the community was better off without him, they had a secret conviction that he knew what he was doing and admired his foolish courage. Most boys have seasons of wishing they could die gloriously instead of just being grocery clerks and going on with their humdrum lives. But this is not the story of Windpeter Winters nor yet of his son Hal who worked on...
Page 180 - Man has a right to expect living passion and beauty in a woman. He has no right to forget that he is an animal and in me there is something that is Greek. I will throw off the woman of my bosom and seek other women. I will besiege this school teacher. I will fly in the face of all men and if I am a creature of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts.