Stories of Chicago

"The stories of George Ade are energetic, detailed, and affectionate slices of the social life of Chicago in the Gay Nineties. Ade's tales originally appeared anonymously in a column in the Chicago Record between 1893 and 1900. They range from candid character sketches and snapshots of everyday street scenes to fiction and fantasies drawing on the endless stream of inspiration the bustling city provided." "Hailed by such contemporaries as Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, and William Dean Howells, Ade is often pigeonholed as a humorist. While he is certainly an undisputed master of comic prose, the stories contained in this volume showcase the full spectrum of Ade's skills: his keen eye for the absurd and sublime moments of daily urban life, his ear for the vernacular of late-nineteenth-century Chicago, his shrewd understanding of the midwestern character, and above all his firm belief that all of human life was worthy literary subject matter." "John T. McCutcheon, Ade's college classmate and friend, illustrated most of the columns, and this volume includes many lively and evocative drawings by the man who came to be known as "the Dean of American Cartoonists." Also included in this edition is an introduction by Franklin J. Meine, incorporating interviews with Ade and letters from John McCutcheon, Mark Twain, and Ade's managing editor, Charles H. Dennis."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.