The Thurber Carnival (Modern Library). This item is unavailable.The Thurber Carnival (Modern Library)

As James Thurber writes in his preface, "This book contains a selection of the stories and drawings the old boy did in his prime, a period which extended roughly from the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to the day coffee was rationed.  He presents this to his readers with his sincere best wishes for a happy new world."  
The Thurber Carnival, which the Saturday Review called "one of the absolutely essential books of our time," was a phenomenal bestseller when it was first published in 1945.  The omnibus, virtually all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, draws from such Thurber classics as My World and Welcome to It, My Life and Hard Times, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bedroom, and Men, Women and Dogs.  "It is time that we stopped thinking of James Thurber as a mere funny man for sophisticates and recognized him as an authentic American genius," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer.  "Mr. Thurber belongs in the great line of American humorists which includes Mark Twain and Ring Lardner."

The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with affordable hardbound editions of important works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoring as its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inaugurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, a