The Homely Heroine: and Other Stories

Written by Edna Ferber

Narrated by Phil Chenevert

“The Homely Heroine” is a short story by American author Edna Ferber. It features a writer whose heroines are generally extremely beautiful. But one day, whilst she is out shopping, a shop-keeper asks her why she doesn’t write stories about a homelier heroine.

“The Homely Heroine” is followed by “A Bush League Hero,” “What she Wore,” and “The Man Who Came Back.”

Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was an American author. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and of Jewish descent, she suffered a lot from antisemitism, especially as a child, and was riddled with fear as she witness the Nazi Party party rise in Germany and gain followers across the Western world. Ferber won the Pulitzer Prize twice, in 1924 with her novel “So Big” and in 1926 with “Show Boat”. Furthermore, her novels “Cimarron” (1930), “Giant” (1952), “Ice Palace” (1958) were each adapted to film. Her novels are remembered and celebrated for their strong female characters and their unique rendering of their American setting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Jan 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9788726472493

Edna Ferber

Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was an American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Jewish parents, Ferber was raised in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Economic hardship and antisemitism made their family a tight knit one as they moved constantly throughout Edna’s youth. At 17, she gave up her dream of studying to be an actor to support her family, finding work at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal as a reporter. In 1911, while recovering from anemia, Ferber published her debut novel, Dawn O’Hara: The Girl Who Laughed, earning a reputation as a rising star in American literature. In 1925, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So Big, which follows a young woman from a suburb of Chicago who takes a job as a teacher in a rural town. She followed up her critically acclaimed bestseller with the novel Show Boat (1926), which was adapted into a popular musical by Oscar Hammerstein and P. G. Wodehouse the year after its release. Several of her books became successful film and theater productions—So Big served as source material for a 1932 movie starring Barbara Stanwick, George Brent, and Bette Davis, which was remade in 1953 with Jane Wyman in the lead role. Ferber spent most of her life in New York City, where she became a member of the influential Algonquin Round Table group. In the leadup to the Second World War, Ferber supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was a fierce critic of Hitler and antisemitism around the world.