SOURCE: "Edna Ferber," in The Literary Spotlight, George H. Doran Company, 1924, pp. 135-45.

Farrar, an American journalist, editor, and critic, founded the publishing companies Farrar and Rinehart and Farrar, Straus and Company, now known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In the following anecdotal essay, he discusses Ferber's evolution from journalist to short story writer and novelist.

At one time, Edna Ferber was in the gravest danger of letting her cleverness run away with her. It might have been her artistic undoing. She would start a short story so brilliantly that one gasped, fearful for the climax of anything so sparklingly begun. But she got over that, and she got over the O. Henry influence. There may be many who will contradict this; certainly there is justification for the opinion that she was an imitator. But she has learned to write her stories backward. She once told an editor...