The Watchful Gods and Other Stories

The Watchful Gods and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Walter Van Tilburg Clark published in 1950. It brings together eight stories and one novella (the title story). Three of the stories had already appeared in the annual anthology of O. Henry Award-winning stories, most notably "The Wind and the Snow of Winter" which was selected by that anthology, in 1945, as their "first-place winner." Since this book's publication, two other stories have remained notable: "The Portable Phonograph" and "Hook" have both been widely anthologized since they were published.

This is the only short story collection that Clark ever published. Along with a few of these stories, Clark is best known for his first novel, the classic Western The Ox-Bow Incident, which was published in 1940.

The stories in the book appear in the following sequence:

After they began appearing in national magazines during the 1940s, Clark's short stories gained national recognition, and earned five O. Henry Prize's between 1941 and 1945. These were:

Since this initial success, some of these stories, notably "Hook" and "The Wind And The Snow Of Winter," have consistently been anthologized as classic examples of the genre."The Portable Phonograph" has also received steady attention during the years since it was first published.

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