Remembered as the lone female member of the New York writers' group known
as the Algonquin Round Table, Parker was one of the most popular and published
writers of the interwar years whose stories and light verse were eagerly sought
by the best magazines. Although widely represented in short story anthologies,
Parker's entire corpus of stories has never been collected in a single volume:
editor Breese includes 13 stories and nine "sketches" not previously
anthologized. Read as a collection, however, the famous sardonic wit becomes
too intrusive, and similarities of plot and character are annoyingly apparent.
Reliance on heavy social drinking as a staple of her plots is less humorous
to Nineties readers, and some of Parker's ideas on the relationship between
the sexes are equally dated. Still, many of the stories, such as the often
reprinted "Big Blonde," are moving, and the whole volume is an unsettling
portrait of the era.

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