Frank R. Stockton
Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 – April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century.
Also recorded as Frank Richard Stockton
Frank R. Stockton
Frank B. Stockton's etching by Jacques Reich, from a photograph. · Public domain
- Born
- Frank R. Stockton was born on 5 April 1834. · Philadelphia.
- Died
- Frank R. Stockton died on 20 April 1902. · The Woodlands.
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- writer, journalist, humorist, novelist and illustrator.
- Languages
- English.
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Frank Richard Stockton (April 5, 1834 – April 20, 1902) was an American writer and humorist, best known today for a series of innovative children's fairy tales that were widely popular during the last decades of the 19th century.
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wikidata · Q1444002 · wikipedia · Frank R. Stockton
In this article
Life
Life
Stockton was born in Philadelphia in 1834, the son of a prominent Methodist minister who discouraged him from a writing career. For years, he supported himself as a wood engraver until his father's death in 1860. Before his fathers death, he married Mary Ann Edwards Tuttle and moved to Burlington, New Jersey, where he produced his first literary work. The couple then moved to Nutley, New Jersey. In 1867, he moved back to Philadelphia to write for a newspaper founded by his brother. His first fairy tale was "Ting-a-ling", published that year in The Riverside Magazine; his first book collection appeared in 1870. He was also an editor for Hearth and Home magazine in the early 1870s. Around 1899, he moved to Charles Town, West Virginia. Stockton died in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 1902 of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried at The Woodlands in Philadelphia.
Works
Works
Rudder Grange, originally serialized in Scribner's Monthly The Lady or the Tiger? and Other Stories, David Douglas, 1884 The Story of Viteau,1884 The Hundredth Man, The Century Co., 1886. The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, The Century Co.,1886 The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1887 The Dusantes, 1888 The Great War Syndicate Dodd, Mead, and Company 1889 The House of Martha, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1891 The Adventures of Captain Horn, 1895 Mrs. Cliff's Yacht, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896 The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander, The Century Co., 1899 A Bicycle of Cathay, Harper and Brothers, 1900 Kate Bonnet: The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter, D. Appleton & Company, 1901 The Captain's Toll-Gate, D. Appleton & Company, 1903 The Magic Egg and Other Stories, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908 The Squirrel Inn, The Century Company,1891 The Lost Dryad, United Workers of Greenwich, 1912 The Novels and Stories, 23 Vol., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1899–1904 Fairy Tales of Frank Stockton, Penguin Books, 1990 (Edited and with a critical afterword by Jack Zipes). ISBN 0-451-52479-9.
Frank R. Stockton, American author. Published in Ellsworth, William Webster (1919), A Golden Age of Authors. New
This image is available from the United States Library of Congress 's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b21067. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1834
Frank R. Stockton was born in 1834 at Philadelphia.
1902
Frank R. Stockton died in 1902 at The Woodlands.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Philadelphia.
Birth place
The Woodlands.
Death place
Writings
Stockton avoided the didactic moralizing common to children's stories of the time. Instead, he humorously poked fun at greed, violence, abuse of power, and other human foibles, describing his fantastic characters' adventures in a charming, matter-of-fact way in stories such as "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" (1885) and "The Bee-Man of Orn" (1887). These two stories were republished in 1963 and 1964 in editions illustrated by Maurice Sendak. "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1963. Stockton's most famous short story was "The Lady, or the Tiger?" (1882), about a man sentenced to an unusual punishment for having a romance with a king's daughter. The man is taken to the public arena where he is faced with two doors, and he must choose which door will open. Behind one of them is a hungry tiger that will devour him; behind the other is a beautiful lady-in-waiting whom he will have to marry. The crowd waits anxiously for his decision, when he sees the princess among the spectators pointing him to the door on the right. The man starts to open the door—and the story abruptly ends. Did the princess save her love by pointing to the door leading to the lady-in-waiting, or did she prefer to see her lover die rather than see him marry someone else? That quandary has made the story a staple in English classes in American schools, especially since Stockton was careful never to hint at what he thought the ending would be. He also wrote a sequel to the story called "The Discourager of Hesitancy". Stockton's 1895 adventure novel The Adventures of Captain Horn was the third-best selling book in the United States in 1895. "The Bee Man of Orn" and several other tales were incorporated in The Bee Man of Orn (1887). Other stories included "The Griffin and the Minor Canon", "Old Pipes and The Dryad", "The Queen's Museum", "Christmas Before Last", "Prince Hassak's March", "The Battle of the Third Cousins", "The Banished King", and "Philopena".
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Frank R. Stockton”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q1444002: Frank R. Stockton
General reference · Wikidata
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Theodore F. Wolfe, M.D. "A Bookish Corner of New Jersey", Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Volume 65 ( J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1900) 103.
- 2.2003 Hall of Fame Inductee Frank R. Stockton, 1834–1902 – Author , Nutley, New Jersey Hall of Fame. Accessed February 9, 2011.
- 3.Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazine, 1865-1885, p. 99 (1938)
- 4.Millard Kessler Bushong, A History of Jefferson County, West Virginia, 1719–1940 (1941; rprt. 2007), p. 258
- 5."Death of Frank R. Stockton", The Literary Digest, May 3, 1902.
- 6.Hiram Collins Haydn in The Thesaurus of Book Digests,
- 7.Alice Payne Hackett. Seventy Years of Best Sellers 1895–1965, p. 91 (1967)
- 8.Zipes, Jack. When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Second Edition, p. 192 (2007)
- 9.Halsey, Francis Whiting. American Authors and Their Homes. James Pott & Company. 59ff. 1901.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 8
- Bowen, Edwin W. "Frank R. Stockton," The Sewanee Review, Vol. 11, No. 4, Oct. 1903.
- Bowen, Edwin W. "The Fiction of Frank R. Stockton," The Sewanee Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, Jul. 1920.
- Eggleston, George Cary. "Recollections of Frank R. Stockton," The Book-Lover, Vol. IV, N°. 4, September/October 1903.
- "Frank R. Stockton's Method of Work," The Literary Digest, May 7, 1898.
- Golemba, Henry L. Frank R. Stockton, Twayne Publishers, 1981.
- Halsey, Francis W. "Frank R. Stockton." In American Authors and Their Homes, J. Pott & Company, 1901.
- Murphy, Gerald P. "The Lady or the Tiger - One Act Play" Lazy Bee Scripts, 2013.
- Quiller-Couch, A. T. "Mr. Stockton." In Adventures in Criticism, Cassell & Company, 1896.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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