When Porter hurried out after midnight to mail the just-finished manuscript of "Flowering Judas" to the editors of the magazine Hound and Horn in 1929, Porter was an obscure writer, hoping that she was on the verge of a breakthrough. Because she had not yet established her reputation when Harcourt Brace accepted a collection including "Flowering Judas" and five other stories for publication the following year, they agreed to print the book only as a limited edition. Flowering Judas and Other Stories did not sell widely for this reason, but the collection received uniformly favorable reviews and, on its strength, Porter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931.

Reviewers gave elaborate praise to Porter's stories, in particular her controlled and original use of language. In Bookmark, E. R. Richardson maintained of the stories: "All are exquisitely done, with feeling for dramatic values, with clarity, with delicate delineation of...