Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

Darlene Harbour Unrue (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1962

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Katherine Anne Porter is best known as a distinguished and prize-winning author of short stories and short novels. Her only long novel,

Ship of Fools

, substantially different in texture from the shorter fiction, nevertheless deserves a respected place in the aggregate of her reputation when the novel is rightfully considered for what it is and what it is not.

In the late 1920s Porter conceived a long autobiographical novel whose working title was “Many Redeemers”. It was to have three parts: “Legend and Memory”, “Midway of This Mortal Life”, and “The Present Day”. The first part was to contain her childhood experiences and family legends handed down from her paternal grandmother; the second part was to focus on her experiences in young adulthood; and the third part, which

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1949 words

Citation: Unrue, Darlene Harbour. "Ship of Fools". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 January 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2087, accessed 16 April 2024.]

Save this article