Bib Ballads

By Ring Lardner

This early work by Ring Lardner was originally published in 1915 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Bib Ballads' contains a selection of poetry. Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan in 1885. He studied engineering at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, but did not complete his first semester. In 1907, Lardner obtained his first job as journalist with the South Bend Times. Six years later, he published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, an epistolary novel written in the form of letters by 'Jack Keefe', a bush-league baseball player, to a friend back home. A huge hit, the book earned the appreciation of Virginia Woolf and others. Lardner went on to write such well-known short stories as 'Haircut', 'Some Like Them Cold', 'The Golden Honeymoon', 'Alibi Ike', and 'A Day with Conrad Green'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473366336

Book preview

PLAYTHING

Ring Lardner

Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Michigan in 1885. He studied engineering at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, but did not complete his first semester. In 1907, Lardner obtained his first job as journalist with the South Bend Times. Six years later, he published his first successful book, You Know Me Al, an epistolary novel written in the form of letters by ‘Jack Keefe’, a bush-league baseball player, to a friend back home. A huge hit, the book earned the appreciation of Virginia Woolf and others.

Lardner went on to write such well-known short stories as ‘Haircut’, ‘Some Like Them Cold’, ‘The Golden Honeymoon’, ‘Alibi Ike’, and ‘A Day with Conrad Green’. He also continued to write follow-up stories to You Know Me Al, with the hero of that book, the headstrong but gullible Jack Keefe, experiencing various ups and downs in his major league career and in his personal life. Private Keefe’s World War I letters home to his friend Al were collected in Treat ‘Em Rough (1918).

Aside from his much-loved short stories, Lardner was also a well-known sports columnist. From 1909 onwards, he penned the humorous baseball column ‘Pullman Pastimes’ for Taylor Spink and the Sporting News in St, Louis. In 1913, he began his syndicated