Published two years after the innovative, influential 1919 masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio, this collection of short stories solidified the author's reputation as a major American writer. Despite their narrative simplicity (similar in style to the work of Hemingway, who was highly influenced by Anderson's technique), these stories explore intriguing psychological depths, redolent with personal epiphanies, erotic undercurrents, and sudden eruptions of passion among seemingly repressed, inarticulate Midwesterners.