Shadows of the Ravine: Mortality-Themed Discards from Bradbury's Illinois Novels
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis offers a focused examination of thematically-related story-chapters that Ray Bradbury originally intended for his first novel concept—Summer Morning, Summer Night, a book set in the vivid memories of his own small-town Midwest childhood. The stories at the heart of this thesis were discarded from the project (often referred to by Bradbury as the “Illinois novel”) by the time that he published a portion of the original project as Dandelion Wine in 1957. As that novelized story cycle is perhaps the best-known of all Bradbury’s “Green Town” books, I intend to use it as a springboard for identifying and examining those stories that were discarded, left unfinished, or eventually published as stand-alone tales in other outlets. Since all of these stories were eliminated before Dandelion Wine emerged as the first published portion of the larger Illinois novel, I will further explore how their hypothetical presence or actual absence may have affected Dandelion Wine as a whole, from inception and development to publication and popular reception, as well as investigate what these tales may reveal about the evolution of Bradbury as a writer.
abstract: This thesis offers a focused examination of thematically-related story-chapters that Ray Bradbury originally intended for his first novel concept—Summer Morning, Summer Night, a book set in the vivid memories of his own small-town Midwest childhood. The stories at the heart of this thesis were discarded from the project (often referred to by Bradbury as the “Illinois novel”) by the time that he published a portion of the original project as Dandelion Wine in 1957. As that novelized story cycle is perhaps the best-known of all Bradbury’s “Green Town” books, I intend to use it as a springboard for identifying and examining those stories that were discarded, left unfinished, or eventually published as stand-alone tales in other outlets. Since all of these stories were eliminated before Dandelion Wine emerged as the first published portion of the larger Illinois novel, I will further explore how their hypothetical presence or actual absence may have affected Dandelion Wine as a whole, from inception and development to publication and popular reception, as well as investigate what these tales may reveal about the evolution of Bradbury as a writer.
author: Harley, Gabriel M.
language: en_US
keywords: Ray Bradbury, Discarded stories, Illinois novel, Dandelion Wine
date published: 2009-09-30T18:12:30Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:41:19Z
provider: IUPUI
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: IUPUI

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1805/1946

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7912/C2/367