Children Are Bored on Sunday
First edition | |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace & Co |
|---|---|
Publication date | 1953 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 252 |
| OCLC | 290015 |
Children Are Bored On Sunday is a collection of short fiction by Jean Stafford published in 1953 by Harcourt, Brace & Co..[1]
Stories
- "The Echo and the Nemesis" [originally titled “The Nemisis”] (The New Yorker December 16, 1950)
- "A Country Love Story" (The New Yorker, May 6, 1950)
- "A Summer Day" (The New Yorker, September 4, 1948)
- "The Maiden" (The New Yorker, April 29, 1950)
- “The Home Front” (Partisan Review, Spring 1945)
- "Between the Porch and the Altar" (Harper’s Magazine, June 1945)
- "The Bleeding Heart" (Partisan Review, September 1948)
- "The Interior Castle" (Partisan Review, November–December 1946)
- "A Modest Proposal" [originally titled “Pax Vobiscum”] (The New Yorker, July 23, 1949)
- "Children Are Bored on Sunday" (The New Yorker, February 14, 1948)
Reception
Reviewer William Peden in the New York Times praised the collection as a welcome addition to her three novels, terming the stories “meaningful and complex.”[2]
Literary critic Ihab Hassan in Western Review places the best stories in the volume within the tradition of James Joyce and Anton Chekov:
The intimate glimpse unresolved, the moment of sudden knowledge, the reversal of a situation, the symbolic crisis, the humour of innocence and perversity, find each some deft application in Jean Stafford’s stories.”[3]
Retrospective appraisal
Stafford’s novels and short stories “collectively merit her a place among the finest fiction writers of her generation.”[4]
Writing in Shenandoah, critic Jerome Mazzaro in comparing Stafford’s work to Marcel Proust’s, singles out “A Country Love Story” as a “classic statement” of her thematic concerns.[5]
Footnotes
- ^ Wilson, 1996 p. 161: Selected Bibliography
- ^ Peden, 1953: “If her world is a bleakly inhibited one, into which sunlight and fresh air seldom penetrate, it is honestly observed and superbly recorded.”
- ^ Hassan, 1955 p. 111
- ^ Wilson, 1996 p. xi: Preface: Stafford’s novels and short stories “collectively merit her a place among the finest fiction writers of her generation.”
- ^ Mazzaro, 1965 p. 149-150
Sources
- Hassan, Ihab. 1955. “Jean Stafford: The Expense of Style and the Scope of Sensibility,” Western Review 19, Spring 1955 pp. 185–203 in Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. 1996. Twayne's Publishing, New York. pp. 109–114. ISBN 0-8057-7807-1
- Mazzaro, Jerome. 1965. “Rememberances of Things Proust” (a review of Jean Stafford’s Bad Characters), Shenandoah 16, Summer 1965. pp. 114–117. Washington and Lee University Review.
- Peden, William. 1953. “A Bleak, Sad World; CHILDREN ARE BORED ON SUNDAY.” New York Times, May 10, 1953. https://www.nytimes.com/1953/05/10/archives/a-bleak-sad-world-children-are-bored-on-sunday-by-jean-stafford-252.html Accessed 12 February 2026.
- Stafford, Jean. 1953. The Children Are Bored on Sunday. Harcourt, Brace & Co, New York. OCLC 290015
- Stafford, Jean. 1984. The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford. E. P. Dutton, New York. ISBN 0-525-48101-X
- Wilson, Mary Ann. 1996. Jean Stafford: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne's Publishing. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-8057-7807-1