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John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein

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First published: 1902
Pages: 269

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About this book

An old estate's garden is the setting Frank R. Stockton gives to these eleven tales, and his opening line sets the frame: the garden did not belong to John Gayther, he merely had charge of it. Gayther is the gardener, an elderly man who had been a sailor, a soldier, a miner, a ranchman, and a good many other things besides. Visitors drift in among the box hedges and grape arbors, settle down, and take turns telling stories: the Daughter of the House, the Master and Mistress, a Frenchman, the Next Neighbor, an old professor, and Pomona and Jonas from Stockton's Rudder Grange books. Gayther opens with a treasure yarn from his sea days and has the last word too. Scribner's published the book in November 1902, months after Stockton died.

About the author

Frank R. Stockton

Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902) was an American writer and humorist who worked as a wood engraver in Philadelphia before turning to fiction and children's writing in his thirties. He is best remembered for "The Lady, or the Tiger?" (1882), a story whose withheld ending became a national parlor argument, and for the Rudder Grange books that began in 1879.