O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 | Page 3

Marion Elizabeth, Bottle Stoppers (Pictorial Review, June).
Wormser, G. Ranger, Gossamer (Pictorial Review, March).
The following stories are regarded the best of the year by the judges
whose names are respectively indicated:
1. The Marriage in Kairwan, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (Harper's,
December). Ethel Watts Mumford.
2. A Life, by Wilbur Daniel Steele (Pictorial Review, August). Edward
J. Wheeler.

3. Wisdom Buildeth Her House, by Donn Byrne (Century, December).
Blanche Colton Williams.
4. Waiting, by Helen R. Hull (Touchstone, February). Grove E. Wilson.
5. The Poppies of Wu Fong, by Lee Foster Hartman (Harper's,
November). Frances Gilchrist Wood.
Out of the first list sixteen stories were requested for republication in
this volume. The significance of the third list lies in the fact that only
one story was selected from it, the others meeting objections from the
remainder of the Committee.
Since no first choice story won the prize, the Committee resorted, as in
former years, to the point system, according to which the leader is "The
Heart of Little Shikara," by Edison Marshall. To Mr. Marshall,
therefore, goes the first prize of $500. In like manner, the second prize,
of $250, is awarded to "The Man Who Cursed the Lilies," by Charles
Tenney Jackson.
In discussing "A Life," "The Marriage in Kairwan," and "'Toinette of
Maissonnoir," all published by Wilbur Daniel Steele in 1921, in
remarking upon the high merit of his brief fiction in other years, and in
recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes of O.
Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the
wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this author's
services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor Wheeler,
therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from the
Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be awarded on account of
general excellence in the short story in 1919, 1920, and 1921. This sum
of $500 was granted by the Society, through the proper authorities, and
is accordingly awarded to Wilbur Daniel Steele.
Two characteristics of stories published in 1921 reveal editorial
policies that cannot but be harmful to the quality of this art. These
ear-marks are complementary and, yet, paradoxically antipodal. In
order to draw out the torso and tail of a story through Procrustean
lengths of advertising pages, some editors place, or seem to place, a

premium upon length. The writer, with an eye to acceptance by these
editors, consciously or unconsciously pads his matter, giving a
semblance of substance where substance is not. Many stories fall below
first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve by
artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten" appeared
again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse of this
policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the tail or,
worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the narrative, then
roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller space determined by
some expediency. Under the observation of the Committee have fallen
a number of stories patently cut for space accommodation. Too free use
of editorial blue pencil and scissors has furnished occasion for protest
among authors and for comment by the press. For example, in The
Literary Review of The New York Post, September 3, the leading article
remarks, after granting it is a rare script that cannot be improved by
good editing, and after making allowance for the physical law of
limitation by space: "Surgery, however, must not become decapitation
or such a trimming of long ears and projecting toes as savage tribes
practise. It seems very probable that by ruthless reshaping and
hampering specifications in our magazines, stories and articles have
been seriously affected." Further, "the passion for editorial cutting" is
graphically illustrated in The Authors' League Bulletin for December
(page 8) by a mutilation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Although, by the terms of the Memorial, the Committee were at liberty
to consider only stories by American authors, they could not but
observe the increasing number of races represented through authorship.
Some of the following names will be recognized from preceding years,
some of them are new: Blasco Ibáñez, W. Somerset Maugham, May
Sinclair, Mrs. Henry Dudeney, Mary Butts, Frank Swinnerton, Georges
Clemenceau, Johan Bojer, H. Söderberg, Seumas Macmanus, R.
Sabatini, Demetra Vaka, Achmed Abdullah, Rabindranath Tagore, A.
Remizov, Konrad Bercovici, Anzia Yezierska, and--daughter of an
English mother and Italian father who met in China, she herself having
been born in San Francisco--Adriana Spadoni. Nor do these represent
all the nations whose sons and daughters practise the one indigenous
American art on its native soil. Let the list stand, without completion,

sufficient to the point.
The note of democracy is sounded, as a sequence, in the subject matter.
East Side Italian and Jew brush