James Thurber, in full James Grover Thurber, (born December 8, 1894, Columbus, Ohio,

U.S.—died November 2, 1961, New York City, New York), American writer and cartoonist,
whose well-known and highly acclaimed writings and drawings picture the urban man as one
who escapes into fantasy because he is befuddled and beset by a world that he neither created
nor understands.
Thurber attended the Ohio State University from 1913 to 1918 and left without taking a
degree. He held several newspaper jobs before going in 1926 to New York City, where he
was a reporter for the Evening Post. In 1927 he joined Harold Ross’s newly established
magazine, The New Yorker, as managing editor and staff writer, making a substantial
contribution to setting its urbane tone. He was later to write an account of his associates there
in The Years with Ross (1959).
His first published drawing in the magazine appeared in 1931. He considered himself
primarily a writer and had been offhand about his sketches. But his friend, the essayist E.B.
White, noticed their worth and had them used as illustrations for their jointly written Is Sex
Necessary? (1929), a spoof on the then-popular earnest, pseudoscientific approach to sex.
Thurber’s stock characters—the snarling wife, her timid, hapless husband, and a roster of
serene, silently observing animals—have become classics of urban mythology.
Advertisement: 0:02

After Thurber left The New Yorker staff in 1933, he remained a leading contributor. In 1940,
failing eyesight, the result of a boyhood accident (he had lost use of his left eye at age 6),
forced him to curtail his drawing, and by 1952 he had to give it up altogether as his blindness
became nearly total.
Get unlimited ad-free access to all Britannica’s trusted content. Start Your Free Trial
Today
My Life and Hard Times (1933) is a whimsical group of autobiographical pieces; a similar
collection of family sketches appeared later in The Thurber Album (1952). Walter Mitty, the
henpecked, daydreaming hero in the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” is
Thurber’s quintessential urban man. That story became Thurber’s best-known. It was first
published in The New Yorker in 1939 and was collected in My World—and Welcome to It
(1942). A film version starring Danny Kaye was released in 1947, and another film
adaptation, directed by and starring Ben Stiller, came out in 2013.
The stories in Thurber’s Fables for Our Time (1940) are deceptively simple and charming in
style yet unflinchingly clear-sighted in their appraisal of human foibles. A play, The Male
Animal (1941), written with Elliott Nugent, is a plea for academic freedom as well as a
comedy. His fantasies for children, The 13 Clocks (1950) and The Wonderful O (1957), are
among the most successful fairy tales of modern times. The Thurber Carnival (1945), a
collection of his writings and drawings, was adapted for the stage in 1960, with Thurber
playing himself. A further collection, Credos and Curios, was published posthumously in
1962.

Early life in Ohio

James Grove Thurber was born on December 8, 1894, in Columbus, Ohio, to Charles
Leander and Mary Agnes Thurber. The family soon moved to Virginia where Charles was
employed as a secretary to a congressman. While playing with his older brother, Thurber was
permanently blinded in his left eye after being shot with an arrow. Problems with his eyesight
would plague Thurber for much of his life. After Charles's employer lost a reelection
campaign, the Thurbers were forced to move back to Ohio. Thurber attended the local public
schools and graduated high school with honors in 1913. He went on to attend Ohio State
University—though he never took a degree—and worked for some years afterwards in Ohio
as a journalist.

Life in New York City

Thurber moved to New York City in 1926 and a year later he met writer E. B. White (1899–
1985) and was taken onto the staff of the New Yorker magazine. In collaboration with White
he produced his first book, Is Sex Necessary? (1929). By 1931 his first cartoons began
appearing in the New Yorker. These primitive yet highly stylized characterizations included
seals, sea lions, strange tigers, harried men, determined women, and, most of all, dogs.
Thurber's dogs became something like a national comic institution, and they dotted the pages
of a whole series of books.
Thurber's book The Seal in the Bedroom appeared in 1932, followed in 1933 by My Life and
Hard Times. He published The Middle-aged Man on the Flying Trapeze in 1935, and by
1937, when he published Let Your Mind Alone!, he had become so successful that he left his
position on the New Yorker staff to become a freelance writer and to travel abroad.
The Last Flower appeared in 1939; that year Thurber collaborated with White on a play, The
Male Animal. The play was a hit when it opened in 1940. But this was also the year that
Thurber was forced to undergo a series of eye operations for cataract and trachoma, two
serious eye conditions. His eyesight grew steadily worse until, in 1951, it was so weak that he
did his last drawing. He spent the last decade of his life inblindness.

Future Tenses Exercise 1. The train __________ (to arrive) at 12:30. 2. We __________ (to
have) dinner at a seaside restaurant on Sunday. 3. It __________(to snow) in Brighton
tomorrow evening. 4. On Friday at 8 o’clock I __________ (to meet) my friend. 5. Paul
__________ (to fly) to London on Monday morning. 6. Wait! I __________ (to drive) you to
the station. 7. The English lesson __________ (to start) at 8:45. 8. Are you still writing your
essay? If you __________ (to finish) by 4pm, we can go for a walk. 9. I __________ (to see)
my mother in April. 10.Look at the clouds – it __________ (to rain) in a few minutes.
11.When they __________ (to get) married in March, they __________ (to be) together for
six years. 12.You’re carrying too much. I __________ (to open) the door for you. 13.Do you
think the teacher __________ (to mark) our homework by Monday morning? 14.When I
__________ (to see) you tomorrow, I __________ (show) you my new book. 15.After you
__________ (to take) a nap, you __________ (to feel) a lot better 16.I’m sorry but you need
to stay in the office until you __________ (to finish) your work. 17.I __________ (to buy)
the cigarettes from the corner shop when it __________ (to open). 18.I __________ (to let)
you know the second the builders __________ (to finish) decorating. 19.Before we
__________ (to start) our lesson, we __________ (to have) a review. 20.We __________ (to
wait) in the shelter until the bus __________ (to come). 21.I’m very sorry Dr. Jones
__________ (not be) back in the clinic until 2pm. 22.This summer, I __________ (to live) in
Brighton for four years. 23.I don’t think you __________ (to have) any problems when you
land in Boston. 24.The baby should be due soon, next week she __________ (to be) pregnant
for nine months. 25.By the time we get home, they __________ (to play) football for 30
minutes. 26.In three years I __________ (to live) in a different country. 27.When you
__________ (to get) off the train, I __________ (to wait) for you by the ticket machine.
28.__________ (to take) your children with you to France? 29.This time next week I
__________ (ski) in Switzerland! 30.Now I __________ (to check) my answers.
Future tenses Exercise Answers
1. The train arrives at 12:30.
2. We are going to have dinner at a seaside restaurant on Sunday.
3. It will snow in Brighton tomorrow evening. (or is going to snow)
4. On Friday at 8 o’clock I am meeting my friend. (or am going to meet)
5. Paul is flying to London on Monday morning.
6. Wait! I will drive you to the station. 7. The English lesson starts at 8:45. 8. Are you still
writing your essay? If you finish by 4pm, we can go for a walk.
9. I am going to see my mother in April.
10.Look at the clouds – it is going to rain in a few minutes. (or will rain) 11.When they get
married in March, they will have been together for six years.
12.You’re carrying too much. I will open the door for you.
13.Do you think the teacher will have marked our homework by Monday morning?
14.When I see you tomorrow, I will show you my new book
. 15.After you take a nap, you will feel a lot better. (or have taken)
16.I’m sorry but you need to stay in the office until you have finished your work. (or finish)
17.I will buy the cigarettes from the corner shop when it opens. 18.I will let you know the
second the builders have finished decorating. (or finish) 19.Before we start our lesson, we are
going to have a review. (or will have) 20.We will wait in the shelter until the bus comes.
21.I’m very sorry Dr. Jones won’t back in the clinic until 2pm. 22.This summer, I will have
been living in Brighton for four years. 23.I don’t think you will have any problems when you
land in Boston. (or are going to have) 24.The baby should be due soon, next week she will
have been pregnant for nine months. 25.By the time we get home, they will have been
playing football for 30 minutes. 26.In three years I am going to live in a different country.
(or will live) 27.When you get off the train, I will be waiting for you by the ticket machine.
28.Are you going to take your children with you to France? 29.This time next week I will be
skiing in Switzerland! 30.Now I will check my answers. (or am going to)
If you have any questions about the questions or answers, or why certain future tense forms
are used, please check out The English Tenses Practical Grammar Guide.

Later years
The last twenty years of Thurber's life were filled with material and professional success in
spite of his handicap. He published at least fourteen more books, including The Thurber
Carnival (1945), Thurber Country (1953), and the extremely popular account of the life of
the New Yorker editor Harold Ross, The Years with Ross (1959). A number of his short
stories were made into movies, including "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947), which is
also regarded as one of the best short stories written in the twentieth century.
Thurber died of pneumonia (an infection of the lungs) on November 2, 1961, just weeks after
suffering a stroke. Thurber left behind a peculiar and unique comic world that was populated
by his curious animals, who watched close by as aggressive women ran to ground apparently
spineless men. But beneath their tame and defeated exteriors, Thurber's men dreamed of wild
escape and epic adventure and, so, in their way won out in the battle of the sexes.

Read more: https://www.notablebiographies.com/St-Tr/Thurber-James.html#ixzz5tiLvxReG

Siew-Yue Killingley was born Leong Siew-Yue in 1940 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaya (now
West Malaysia), in a Cantonese-speaking family. She married in 1963, and moved to England
in 1968. Her work as a teacher began in 1961, when she taught in schools while still a student
at the University of Malaya. After graduating she taught English language, literature,
phonetics, and linguistics at the University of Malaya, and gained an MA in linguistics. She
then taught English and other subjects at St. John’s Institution, Kuala Lumpur, and La Salle
School, Petaling Jaya.

On coming to Newcastle in 1970, she taught linguistics and phonetics part-time in the School
of English, University of Newcastle, and from 1972 to 1980 she was Lecturer, later Senior
Lecturer, at St. Mary’s College, Fenham, where she taught linguistics, English language and
literature, and supervised teaching practice in schools.

From 1980 she was constantly engaged in part-time teaching, including linguistics and
phonetics at the Department of Speech and the School of Education in Newcastle University,
and Community Interpreting and Bilingual Skills at the College of Arts and Technology (now
Newcastle College). At different times from 1968 she gave individual tuition in Cantonese to
children.

From 1988, she taught in the Centre for Continuing Education (now the Centre for Life-long
Learning) in the University of Newcastle, mainly on aspects of language and its use in
society.

In 1994 she introduced courses on Chinese language and culture at the Centre. In 2002, these
courses became part of the programme of the Workers’ Educational Association.

Siew-Yue did not just teach her students; she worked with them, using whatever mental
equipment they brought to the class. They were impressed by her devotion to the subjects she
taught, and to the high scholarly standards she set herself and them. They recognised her deep
learning in many fields, and her willingness to share it with others. They were also aware that
she was always interested in them as individuals, responding to the personal and academic
needs of each of them.

Besides teaching, Siew-Yue was active in creative and performing arts. She wrote poetry and
plays, drew competently, and played the flute to a high standard. In her school years she
studied ballet, and she continued to take an active interest in dance, including choreography.
She also carried out linguistic and literary research on English and Chinese.
In 1981 she founded the non-commercial publishing business Grevatt & Grevatt, named in
memory of her father-in-law Arthur Victor Grevatt Killingley (1897-1979), publishing
academic work and poetry by herself and others. Since her death the business has been
carried on by Dermot Killingley.

Siew-Yue’s  Northumbrian Passion Play  (Grevatt & Grevatt, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1999)
was performed at All Saints’ Church, Gosforth in 1999, the Church of St. Thomas the Martyr,
Newcastle, in 2001, and St. George’s Church, Morpeth in 2002. Her dramatization of John
Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was performed at the Church of St. Thomas the Martyr in 2002.
The last three productions were by St. Tom’s Players, for which she worked as literary
adviser, choreographer and flautist.
Eudora Welty, (born April 13, 1909, Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.—died July 23, 2001,
Jackson), American short-story writer and novelist whose work is mainly focused with great
precision on the regional manners of people inhabiting a small Mississippi town that
resembles her own birthplace and the Delta country.

Welty attended Mississippi State College for Women before transferring to the University of
Wisconsin, from which she graduated in 1929. During the Great Depression she was a
photographer on the Works Progress Administration’s Guide to Mississippi, and photography
remained a lifelong interest. Photographs (1989) is a collection of many of the photographs
she took for the WPA. She also worked as a writer for a radio station and newspaper in her
native Jackson, Mississippi, before her fiction won popular and critical acclaim.
Welty’s first short story was published in 1936, and thereafter her work began to appear
regularly, first in little magazines such as the Southern Review and later in major periodicals
such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. Her readership grew steadily after the
publication of A Curtain of Green (1941; enlarged 1979), a volume of short stories that
contains two of her most anthologized stories—“The Petrified Man” and “Why I Live at the
P.O.” In 1942 her short novel The Robber Bridegroom was issued, and in 1946 her first full-
length novel, Delta Wedding. Her later novels include The Ponder Heart (1954), Losing
Battles (1970), and The Optimist’s Daughter (1972), which won a Pulitzer Prize. The Wide
Net and Other Stories (1943), The Golden Apples (1949), and The Bride of Innisfallen and
Other Stories (1955) are collections of short stories, and The Eye of the Story (1978) is a
volume of essays. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty was published in 1980.
Pause
Unmute
Loaded: 0%
1:22
Progress: 0%

Remaining Time -2:41

Fullscreen

Welty’s main subject is the intricacies of human relationships, particularly as revealed

through her characters’ interactions in intimate social encounters. Among her themes are the
subjectivity and ambiguity of people’s perception of character and the presence of virtue
hidden beneath an obscuring surface of convention, insensitivity, and social prejudice.
Welty’s outlook is hopeful, and love is viewed as a redeeming presence in the midst of
isolation and indifference. Her works combine humour and psychological acuity with a sharp
ear for regional speech patterns.
Get unlimited ad-free access to all Britannica’s trusted content. Start Your Free Trial
Today
One Writer’s Beginnings, an autobiographical work, was published in 1984. Originating in a
series of three lectures given at Harvard, it beautifully evoked what Welty styled her
“sheltered life” in Jackson and how her early fiction grew out of it.

AWARDS AND HONORS

 Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980)
 Pulitzer Prize
April 13, 1909
Jackson, Mississippi
DIED

July 23, 2001 (aged 92)

Jackson, Mississippi
NOTABLE WORKS
 “Why I Live at the P.O.”
 “Delta Wedding”
 “The Wide Net and Other Stories”
 “The Golden Apples”
 “The Ponder Heart”
 “The Optimist’s Daughter”
 “A Curtain of Green”
 “One Writer’s Beginnings”
 “Losing Battles”
Amy Tan is a Chinese-American novelist who wrote the New York
Times-bestselling novel The Joy Luck Club.
Synopsis

Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. In 1985, she wrote the story
"Rules of the Game," which was the foundation for her first novel The Joy Luck Club. The
book explored the relationship between Chinese women and their Chinese-American
daughters. It received the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was translated into 25
languages. Tan lives in San Francisco and New York.

Profile

Writer. Born February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. Tan grew up in Northern California,
but when her father and older brother both died from brain tumors in 1966, she moved with
her mother and younger brother to Europe, where she attended high school in Montreux,
Switzerland. She returned to the United States for college, attending Linfield College in
Oregon, San Jose City College, San Jose State University, the University of California at
Santa Cruz and the University of California at Berkeley.

After college, Tan worked as a language development consultant and as a corporate freelance
writer. In 1985, she wrote the story "Rules of the Game" for a writing workshop, which
formed the early foundation for her first novel The Joy Luck Club. Published in 1989, the
book explored the relationship between Chinese women and their Chinese-American
daughters, and became the longest-running New York Times bestseller for that year. The Joy
Luck Club received numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award. It has
been translated into 25 languages, including Chinese, and was made into a major motion
picture for which Tan co-wrote the screenplay.

ADVERTISEMENT
THANKS FOR WATCHING!
Her other two books, The Kitchen God's Wife (1991) and The Hundred Secret Senses (1995),
have also appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Her latest novel, The Bonesetter's
Daughter, was published in 2001. Tan has also written two children's books: The Moon Lady
(1992) and The Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), the latter of which was adapted to television for
PBS.

Amy Tan has been married to her husband, Lou DeMattei, for over twenty years. They live in
San Francisco and New York.
Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California. Her family lived in several communities in Northern
California before settling in Santa Clara. Both of her parents were Chinese immigrants. Her father,
John Tan, was an electrical engineer and Baptist minister who came to America to escape the
turmoil of the Chinese Civil War.

The harrowing early life of her mother, Daisy, inspired Amy Tan’s novel The Kitchen God’s Wife. In
China, Daisy had divorced an abusive husband but lost custody of her three daughters. She was
forced to leave them behind when she escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the
Communist takeover in 1949. Her marriage to John Tan produced three children, Amy and her two
brothers.

May 1956: The Tan family in front of their rented apartment in Oakland, California. From left to
right, Amy Tan’s mother, Daisy; brother, John Jr.; Amy Tan, age 4; her older brother, Peter; and her
father, John. Before Amy Tan graduated from high school, she says, her family lived in 13 different
houses in the San Francisco Bay area.

Tragedy struck the Tan family when Amy’s father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors
within a year of each other. Mrs. Tan moved her surviving children to Switzerland, where Amy
finished high school, but by this time mother and daughter were in constant conflict.

The Joy Luck Club is a 1989 novel written by Amy Tan. The novel consists of 16 interlocking stories
about the lives of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four American-born daughters in San
Francisco who start a club known as The Joy Luck Club, playing the Chinese game of mahjong for
money while feasting on a variety of foods.

Mother and daughter did not speak for six months after Amy Tan left the Baptist college her mother
had selected for her, to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College. Tan further defied her mother
by abandoning the pre-med course her mother had urged, to pursue the study of English and
linguistics. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in these fields at San Jose State
University. In 1974, she and her boyfriend, Louis DeMattei, were married. They were later to settle in
San Francisco.

1993: Amy Tan was born in Oakland, California. She is the second of three children born to Chinese
immigrants, John and Daisy Tan. When she was fifteen years old, her father and older brother Peter
both died of brain tumors within six months of each other. Daisy subsequently moved Amy and her
younger brother to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa in
Montreaux. During this period, Amy Tan learned about her mother’s former marriage to another
man in China, of their four children, and how her mother left her children from her previous
marriage behind in Shanghai. This incident was the basis for Tan’s first novel The Joy Luck Club.

DeMattei, an attorney, took up the practice of tax law, while Tan studied for a doctorate in
linguistics, first at the University of California at Santa Cruz, later at Berkeley. By this time, she had
developed an interest in the problems of the developmentally disabled. She left the doctoral
program in 1976 and took a job as a language development consultant to the Alameda County
Association for Retarded Citizens, and later directed a training project for developmentally disabled
children.

The Kitchen God’s Wife was first published in 1991. The novel deals extensively with Sino-American
female identity, and draws on the story of her mother’s life. A principal theme is the struggle of
females in a patriarchal society.

With a partner, she started a business writing firm, providing speeches for the salesmen and
executives of large corporations. After a dispute with her partner, who believed she should give up
writing to concentrate on the management side of the business, she became a full-time freelance
writer. Among her business works, written under non-Chinese-sounding pseudonyms, were a 26-
chapter booklet called “Telecommunications and You,” produced for IBM.

Council member Amy Tan with Academy delegates at the 1998 Achievement Summit in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming.

Amy Tan prospered as a business writer. After a few years in business for herself, she had saved
enough money to buy a house for her mother. She and her husband lived well on their double
income, but the harder Tan worked at her business, the more dissatisfied she became. The work had
become a compulsive habit, and she sought relief in creative efforts. She studied jazz piano, hoping
to channel the musical training forced on her by her parents in childhood into a more personal
expression. She also began to write fiction.

Amy Tan and her pet Yorkie with Academy delegates at the 2000 Academy Summit program in
Scottsdale, Arizona.

Her first story, “Endgame,” won her admission to the Squaw Valley writer’s workshop taught by
novelist Oakley Hall. The story appeared in FM literary magazine, and was reprinted in Seventeen. A
literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra, was impressed enough with Tan’s second story, “Waiting Between
the Trees,” to take her on as a client. Dijkstra encouraged Tan to complete an entire volume of
stories.

Amy Tan with longtime University of Arizona men’s basketball coach and Academy guest of honor
Lute Olson at the American Academy of Achievement’s 2000 Banquet of the Golden Plate
ceremonies held in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Just as she was embarking on this new career, Tan’s mother fell ill. Amy Tan promised herself that if
her mother recovered, she would take her to China, to see the daughters who had been left behind
almost 40 years before. Mrs. Tan regained her health, and mother and daughter departed for China
in 1987. The trip was a revelation for Tan. It gave her a new perspective on her often-difficult
relationship with her mother, and inspired her to complete the book of stories she had promised her
agent. On the basis of the completed chapters, and a synopsis of the others, Dijkstra found a
publisher for the book, now called The Joy Luck Club. With a $50,000 advance from G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, Tan quit business writing and finished her book in a little more than four months.
2002: Amy Tan’s third novel, A Hundred Secret Senses, was a departure from the first two novels, in
focusing on the relationships between sisters. Tan’s fourth novel, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, returns
to the theme of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter. Amy Tan has
written two children’s books: The Moon Lady (1992), and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994)
which was adapted into a PBS animated TV show. (Corbis)

Upon its publication in 1989, Tan’s book won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight months on The
New York Times bestseller list. The paperback rights sold for $1.23 million. The book has been
translated into 17 languages, including Chinese. Her subsequent novel, The Kitchen God’s Wife
(1991), confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales. In the following years, Amy Tan
published two books for children, The Moon Lady and The Sagwa, and two more novels: The
Hundred Secret Senses (1995) and The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001).

2008: Amy Tan and her husband, Lou DeMattei, with their dogs in Sausalito, California. Tan and her
mother “did not speak for six months after Tan dropped out of the Baptist College her mother had
selected for her to follow her boyfriend to San Jose City College in California. Tan met him on a blind
date and married him in 1974. She went on to receive degrees in English and linguistics from San
Jose State University. While in school, Amy Tan worked odd jobs — serving as a switchboard
operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker — before starting a writing career.”

In 2003, she published The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, an autobiography in which she
disclosed her experience with Lyme disease, a chronic bacterial infection contracted from the bite of
a common tick. Amy Tan’s case went undiagnosed for years before she received proper treatment,
and she suffered intense physical pain, mental impairment and seizures. For years, Lyme disease
made it impossible for Amy Tan to continue writing. With medication, she has been able to control
the worst symptoms of her illness, and has resumed writing, but she also spends much of her energy
raising awareness of Lyme disease, promoting its early detection and treatment, and advocating for
the rights of Lyme disease patients.

October 2013: Bestselling author Amy Tan poses for a portrait at her home in Sausalito, California.
(Michael Short)

With her illness under control, Amy Tan has completed two works of fiction. Her novel Saving Fish
from Drowning appeared in 2005. In 2013, she published one of her most ambitious books to date,
The Valley of Amazement, an epic saga told from the point of view of a part-American girl raised
among the courtesans of Shanghai in the first years of the 20th century. Tan published a powerful
memoir, Where the Past Begins, in 2017. The book recounts her difficult childhood and complex
relationship with her mother, as well as her evolution as a writer and collaboration with her
longtime editor Dan Halpern, in an intense exploration of the relationship between memory and
creativity.