My Life and Hard Times and Other Observations

This selection opens with Thurber's 1933 memoir of a Columbus, Ohio, household and then adds later comic sketches drawn from his magazine pieces. The memoir chapters recount night alarms that prove local or imaginary: a collapsing bed, a rumoured flood, a supposed ghost, a biting family dog, a car that must be pushed, and the author's struggles at university and before a draft board. Grandfather, mother, and a shifting cast of servants keep the house in mild uproar. The later pieces turn to marriage, office manners, and language, often with his own line drawings. The volume is humorous autobiography and casual essay, not a novel.

Bound in cream cloth blocked with a drawing on both covers. Mud green endleaves. Bright green slipcase.