American Classics PDF EPUB

From Place to Place

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1920
Pages: 250

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About this book

Nine stories make up this 1920 collection by Irvin S. Cobb, the Kentucky humorist and newspaperman whose fiction mined the manners of small-town America. The book opens with "The Gallowsmith," a portrait of an aging public hangman named Uncle Tobe who treats execution as an ordinary trade, then moves through pieces such as "Boys Will Be Boys," "Quality Folks," and "The Bull Called Emily." Cobb's range runs from broad comedy to real pathos, often turning on a single object (a broken shoelace, a lucky charm, a stubborn animal) to show how ordinary people give themselves away. The stories mix regional color with a sharp eye for character, and they show the sort of writing that once made Cobb one of the most widely read storytellers in America.

About the author

Irvin S. Cobb

Irvin S. Cobb, whose full name was Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, moved from Kentucky newspapers to national reporting, magazine work, fiction and screenwriting. Born in Paducah in 1876, he began as a local reporter and later joined Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He also reported from Europe during the First World War.