The first story in Edna Ferber's 1912 collection opens with a narrator who cheerfully admits ignorance of New York's Fifth Avenue, declaring instead that this is a tale of Chicago's Nottingham curtain district—a neighborhood of "two-story-and-basement houses" with mangy front yards and signs for "Rooms With or Without Board." The narrator's voice is both self-deprecating and knowing, mocking magazine conventions while using them. The catalog subjects list "United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century" and "Short stories," but the excerpts show Ferber focusing on a very specific urban geography and class milieu, not a broad national portrait.

The Foreword's Promise and the Stories' Scope

The foreword explicitly rejects the fairy-tale ending of "happily ever after," substituting the blunt phrase "And so they lived." This sets a tone of realism and anticlimax. The catalog subject "Social life and customs" might suggest a documentary approach, but Ferber's narrator is playful and opinionated. In "The Frog and the Puddle," she describes a fruiterer's window as "a work of art, that window; a breeder of anarchism, a destroyer of contentment." The stories appear to focus on characters like Jennie, a hungry girl out of work, and the gazers before the window—a milliner's apprentice, a mail carrier, an errand boy. The catalog's broad subject is narrowed by Ferber's specific, ironic voice and her concentration on urban struggle.

Setting as Character: The Nottingham Curtain District

The opening story devotes considerable detail to the physical setting: "Block after block the two-story-and-basement houses stretch, all grimy and gritty." The district is defined by its "Nottingham curtain"—lace curtains yellowed by Chicago smoke. Ferber notes that the area "does not run heavily to delicacies. It is stronger on creamed cabbage and bread pudding." This specificity grounds the stories in a particular time and place, but the excerpts offer only one complete story opening. The catalog subject "United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century" is accurate but generic; Ferber's treatment is local and sensory, not encyclopedic. The remaining stories' settings—from a bush league baseball team to a home-town feeling—may extend this geography, but the excerpts do not confirm that.

Narrative Voice and Self-Awareness

Ferber's narrator is conspicuously aware of literary conventions. She opens by saying that any story not set in New York "is merely junk," then proceeds to set hers in Chicago. She admits to not knowing New York streets, and she labels her own plot as a variation on "He Asked You For Bread, and Ye Gave Him a Stone" from the Bible. This self-consciousness extends to the characters: the hungry girl Jennie is introduced with "Canny? Not necessarily, or why should she have been hungry and out of a job in January?" The narrator's asides create a conversational, sometimes sardonic tone. The catalog subject "Psychological & Social Fiction" fits this interior focus, but the excerpts show that the psychology is delivered through a wry, external commentary rather than deep interiority.

Readers should note that the excerpts provide only the first story and the foreword. The table of contents lists eleven more stories with titles like "What She Wore," "A Bush League Hero," and "The Homely Heroine." Ferber's distinctive voice—combining local detail, narrative self-awareness, and a refusal of sentimental endings—may carry through the collection, but the evidence here does not reveal the range of settings or characters beyond the opening. Approach the book as a set of linked but independent stories, each likely testing the foreword's promise to stop short of "happily ever after."