The completist part of me was pleased to finally get hold of James Thurber’s The Great Quillow the other day. It was the only remaining dust-jacketed Thurber title (US title, that is*) missing from the Spill library; I’ve had a jacket-less copy of The Great Quillow for many years. Admittedly, I was in no great hurry to get hold of a “complete” copy because the book was not illustrated by Thurber. Curiously that hesitancy did not extend to the other Thurber books sans Thurber art: The 13 Clocks, Many Moons, The Wonderful O, and The White Deer (the exception here as it includes Thurber drawings galore, but Don Freeman provided the cover art and four pages of color art within).
I finally sprung for the dust-jacketed Great Quillow when I noticed a copy listed by a Canadian bookseller at a price less than it cost to fill-up a tank of gas at the local service station.
Above: the set brought together for a photo shoot.
Below: the books in chronological order, with the artists who illustrated them:
Many Moons. 1943. Illustrated by Louis Slobodkin.
The Great Quillow. 1944. Illustrated by Doris Lee.
The White Deer. 1945 (as explained above: Thurber drawings galore, but Don Freeman‘s art appears on the cover and in a four-page color section within).
The 13 Clocks. 1950. illustrated by Marc Simont.
The Wonderful O. 1957. Illustrated by Marc Simont.
______________________________________________
*I’ve been s-l-o-w-l-y working on gathering the UK Thurber books.
James Thurber’s A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website