Earthly Creatures


Earthly Creatures is a collection of short fiction by Charles R. Jackson published in 1953 by Farrar, Straus and Young.

Stories

Preface: A note to the reader by Charles Jackson.
  • “The Boy Who Ran Away
  • “Romeo”
  • “The Break”
  • “A Sunday Drive”
  • “Money”
  • “Parting at Morning”
  • “The Cheat”
  • “The Sleeper Awakened”
  • “Old Men and Boys”
  • “The Outlander”

    Background and publication

Jackson's motivation for writing this short story collection was two-fold: his desperate financial situation, and his desire to maintain his presence in the literary community.
Ballantine Books and Farrar, Straus and Young arranged to have the collection issued in both hardcover and paperback. Sales were boosted by a number of good reviews: 85,000 of the mass market paperbacks were sold.
Literary critic John W. Crowley reports “Sales were light overall and almost exclusively in paperback, making the hardcover format by far the rarest of Jackson's books.

Reception

Critical approval of the collection was widespread, even “generous.” Critic Harvey Breit at the New York Times Book Review declared: “We have never seen Mr. Jackson better...” October 4, 1953.
Budd Schulberg in New York Times Book Review: “A giftedly readable and provocative collection...it is in a far deeper sense that this fine group of stories enriches us...” Willian Peden at the Saturday Review: “The central character of most of the short stories in Charles Jackson's Earthly Creatures is his own worst enemy...We watch him, in story after story, methodically going about the business of destroying himself.”
Jackson's himself did not think highly of the volume; only two of the stories, “The Break” and “The Boy Who Ran Awary” did he consider satisfactory. Jackson wrote in the preface he was “fully conscious of the knowledge they are somewhat less than the ideal in a form I love.”
Despite Jackson's hopes to the contrary Earthly Creatures “did not revive the career of a writer still largely known for a first novel,” namely The Lost Weekend.

Theme

Biographer Mark Connelly writes: