James Thurber Books in Order

Thurber and E. B. White parody explanations of romance, marriage, and sexual behavior in their first prose book. Comic observations and Thurber’s drawings turn the language of psychology and advice writing into a satire of human relationships.

Thurber follows Mr. and Mrs. Monroe through marital misunderstandings, parodies advice for pet owners, and turns modern grammar guides into comedy. These short pieces and drawings find confusion in domestic life, animal care and the rules meant to make language clear.

Short prose pieces and drawings come together in Thurber’s fifth book. The collection presents his humor in both written and visual form, giving readers a volume of brief works accompanied by the author’s illustrations.

Thurber answers the self-help industry with humorous essays and his own drawings. The collection turns skeptical attention toward promises of personal improvement, examining the absurdities of advice books that flourished during the 1930s.

After a devastating world war, civilization, gardens, and love have vanished. A girl’s discovery of the last surviving flower begins a picture parable about destruction, renewal, and the fragile possibility of rebuilding human life.

Animal fables expose human weaknesses through short, satirical moral lessons. Thurber pairs the tales with his own illustrations and visual interpretations of well-known poems, combining verbal humor with drawings that complicate their apparent wisdom.

Professor Tommy Turner faces pressure over what he plans to teach just as his wife’s former football-hero sweetheart returns. Academic freedom and marital jealousy collide during a college football weekend in this comedy.

A little princess decides she wants the moon, creating a problem for everyone trying to satisfy her. Thurber's illustrated fairy tale follows the surprising fulfillment of a wish that appears impossible to grant.

Thirty stories, sketches, and articles range across marriage, courtship, baseball, sailing, literature, and murder. Thurber's drawings accompany a collection that moves between broad comedy and darker observations about familiar human habits.

Selected stories and drawings bring together Thurber's observations of society and human behavior, including 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.' The collection draws from several earlier books to present the range of his humor.

Thurber's drawings turn relations between men, women and their canine companions into scenes of conflict and absurdity. The collection includes his visual chronicle of the war between the sexes, with a preface by Dorothy Parker.

A demanding, gluttonous giant threatens a village whose people cannot meet his expectations. Quillow, a toymaker, devises a clever scheme to save his neighbors, setting resourcefulness against an opponent who seems impossible to overcome.

A deer becomes a princess and gives three princes dangerous tasks to complete if they want to marry her. Wizards, dragons, riddles, and enchantments complicate their quests in a fairy tale about false love and true.

Thurber recounts family life and boyhood through stories of domestic chaos, frustration, and unusual dogs. Personal recollections become comic accounts of the misunderstandings and eccentric behavior that marked the world in which he grew up.

James Thurber recalls the relatives, friends, teachers, and colleagues who shaped his early life in Columbus, Ohio. These portraits recover the people and habits of an earlier era while tracing the personal roots of his humor.

Two treasure hunters seize control of an island and ban the letter O when their search fails. As ordinary language becomes impossible, the islanders must find a way to resist the intruders and recover their freedom.

Stories, essays, and drawings celebrate the real and imagined dogs in Thurber’s life. Their unruly habits, misunderstandings, and relationships with people turn everyday domestic experiences into affectionate comedy about both animals and their human companions.

Thurber’s fables use tales of misfortune to question human behavior and the lessons people draw from it. Brief comic narratives combine the familiar shape of moral stories with the humorist’s skeptical view of everyday life.

Thurber gathers stories and comic observations that turn ordinary situations into bewildering predicaments. From modern jargon to the problems of growing older, his characters struggle to make sense of a world governed by peculiar rules.

Thurber recalls his years at The New Yorker and his friendship with its founder, Harold Ross. Anecdotes about writers, editorial battles, and office eccentricities form a portrait of the man who shaped the magazine.

Thurber's stories and essays explore the confusion hidden in everyday speech, using wordplay, deliberate errors and verbal misunderstandings. Accompanied by his drawings, the pieces turn language and ordinary encounters into occasions for humor and reflection.

Previously uncollected pieces range from Thurber’s notebooks to his portrait of friend John McNulty. Writing and illustrations bring together varied subjects and moods, connected by the humorist’s distinctive observations and personal voice.

This collection gathers Thurber’s drawings of animals, including human beings. His visual comedy places men, women, and other creatures together, offering readers a volume centered on the cartoonist’s ways of depicting their behavior and relationships.

Thurber’s letters are collected alongside thirty-seven of his drawings, bringing his private correspondence together with his visual humor. The volume offers another way to encounter the voice and imagination behind his familiar stories and cartoons.

Previously uncollected essays, articles, reviews, parodies, and cartoons reveal Thurber’s views on writing and humor. Reflections on theater and The New Yorker place his creative work alongside observations of other writers and his own career.

Stories, articles, and drawings explore crime and everyday wrongdoing through Thurber’s comic perspective. Edited by Robert Lopresti, the collection brings together the humorist’s observations of human villainy, accompanied by thirty-two line drawings.

Eighteen prose pieces and more than seventy-five previously uncollected drawings explore dogs, machinery, human relationships, and other Thurber concerns. The collection brings together comic observations that reveal his fascination with everyday frustrations and unexpected absurdities.

This selection gathers stories and cartoons from across Thurber’s career, including Walter Mitty and The Catbird Seat. Domestic anxieties, relations between men and women, animals, and imaginative escapes reveal the comic logic of his world.

This collection traces Thurber’s life through correspondence, much of it previously unpublished, from youthful romances to literary friendships and family relationships. Letters and drawings illuminate his work, marriages, and turbulent years at The New Yorker.

A tiger decides he should rule the animals and challenges the lion's authority, drawing the jungle into conflict. Thurber's fable examines the hunger for power and the destruction caused by a struggle for supremacy.

Humorous stories, essays and drawings examine human behavior alongside the animals that share Thurber's imagined world. The collection also includes reporting for The Talk of the Town, bringing his curiosity about real people into the same volume as his inventions.

Thurber's cartoons transform encounters between women, men and animals into unexpected predicaments. Sequences about dogs, tennis, parties and the collapse of civilization bring familiar social rituals into a world where ordinary situations repeatedly slip into absurdity.

Marriage, travel and correspondence become sources of confusion in this collection of humorous pieces. Thurber explores pleasure cruises, practical jokes, awkward gifts and linguistic difficulties, finding comedy in the small decisions and misunderstandings that unsettle everyday life.