Thurber’s classic “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” first appeared in The New Yorker issue of March 18, 1939. It’s a 1 and 2/3rds page piece (a Morris Bishop poem takes up the other 1/3 of a page). As we know, the piece was twice made into a film.
In an interview with George Plimpton and Max Steele in 1958, Thurber said of Mitty: “In ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ I tried to treat the remarkable as commonplace.” I’ve always loved that quote — in a way it’s a blueprint for (New Yorker) cartoons (at least I take it as a blueprint).
What I find interesting is that the Mitty piece has also been made into a stand alone book, and not just once, but numerous times. I ran into this version on Ebay the other day.
It was published in 1983 by Penguin — it’s 32 pages long, with illustrations by Sandra Higashi. The temptation is to buy the book to see how less than two pages has been stretched to 32. I suppose, with a heavy amount of illustration, it would be a piece of cake. Penguin also released this version (below) in 2016.
and then there are these samples of the many editions/cover variations out there, published (l-r) in 1963 from Editions; in 2009 by Robert Laffont; in 2013 by Penguin
One more…there’s also a 32 page study guide from Gale, published in 2017:
Here’s Thurber’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
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