In American classic in the vein of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, this first book of James T. Farrell's powerful Studs Lonigan trilogy covers five months of the young hero's life in 1916, when he is sixteen years old. In this relentlessly naturalistic yet richly complex portrait, Studs is carried along by his swaggering and shortsighted companions, his narrow family, and his educational and religious background toward a fate that he resists yet cannot escape.

A Prairie State BookThese stories, chosen from ten separately published collections of James T. Farrell's short fiction, offer remarkable insights into the lives of Irish Americans and other Chicagoans from 1910 to 1940. They are gems of the short fiction genre, unique, pioneering, and accomplished. Farrell's stories offer a wonderful diversity of characters and experiences, from self-deluded, impoverished victims to portraits of the artist as a young Irish-American living on Chicago's South Side. Charles Fanning's introduction presents Farrell as one of the best Illinois writers of the first half of the century and his stories as among the best in realistic short fiction anywhere.

The fourth novel in James T. Farrell's pentalogy chronicles Danny O'Neill's coming of age. Recording his reactions to initiation into college life at the University of Chicago and the imminent death of his grandmother, one of his primary caretakers, Danny realizes the value of time and gains confidence in his writing abilities. As he works on his first novel, he prepares to leave his family, his Catholicism, and his neighborhood in Chicago behind for a new life as a writer in New York.