“The Devil and Daniel Webster”
Stephen Vincent Benét
The short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” has thrived in print, on air, on stage, and in film. It has been referenced by modern media enough where it may even be a trope in itself. Written by Stephen Vincent Benét and first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1936, the story — which examines the life of farmer Jabez Stone who makes a deal with the devil — touches on issues that are all-too-American and lessons still pertinent today: patriotism, slavery, harms to indigenous populations and others, and the difference between law and justice. The story won the O. Henry Award in 1937, and Benét won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1929 and posthumously in 1944. A Northerner with connections to the South (via Augusta, Ga.), Benét’s wife is notable, too. Leigh, P. T., and regular-but-still-special guest Dr. Carol Andrews, associate professor emerita of literature, weave in some Rosemary Carr alongside Benét and his story.
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