Whit Burnett was a writer and writing teacher who founded and edited the literary magazine Story

Story (magazine)

Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 67 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley...

. In the 1940s, Story was an important magazine in that it published the first or early works of many writers who went on to become major authors. Not only did Burnett prove to be a valuable literary birddog for new talent, but Story remained a respectable though low-paying (typically $25 per story) alternative for stories rejected by the large-circulation slick magazines published on glossy paper like Collier's

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

or The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

or the somewhat more prestigious and literary slick magazines such as The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

. While Story paid poorly compared to the slicks and even the pulps and successor digest-sized magazines of its day, it paid better than most of, and had similar cachet to, the university-based and the other independent "little magazines" of its era.

Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, founded the magazine in Vienna, Austria in 1931. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 67 copies of the debut issue (April–May, 1931) were mimeographed in Vienna. Two years later, the couple moved to New York City, where they continued to publish the magazine.

Burnett and Foley created The Story Press in 1936. In 1939, Harper & Bros. published his memoir The Literary Life and to Hell With It. In the Time Magazine review of the book, entitled "Funny Editor", the anonymous reviewer characterized Burnett as a humorist.

Columbia University

Burnett taught a short-story writing course at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in the 1930 and '40s. One of his students was J.D. Salinger, whom he mentored and whose first short story, "The Young Folks

The Young Folks

"The Young Folks" was J. D. Salinger's first published story, published in Whit Burnett's Story magazine in the March–April 1940.The story satirizes the selfish concerns of a pair of young adults at a party and the festering shallowness of their lives. Burnett was the teacher of short story writing...

", was published by Burnett in Story Magazine.

Salinger, in his 1964 essay "A Salute to Whit Burnett" said that it was Burnett's use of William Faulkner's

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

 short story "That Evening Sun Go Down

That Evening Sun

"That Evening Sun" is a short story by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1931 on the collection These 13, which included Faulkner's most anthologized story, "A Rose for Emily". "That Evening Sun" is a dark portrait of white Southerners' indifference to the crippling fears of one of...

" in the class that taught him the importance of the author's relationship with his readers.

Burnett's plan to publish a book of Salinger's short stories in 1946 fell through, straining their relationship.

New Authors

By the late 1930s, the circulation of Story had climbed to 21,000 copies. In addition to Salinger, major authors introduced in Story included Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...

, Erskine Caldwell

Erskine Caldwell

Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...

, John Cheever

John Cheever

John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...

, James T. Farrell

James T. Farrell

James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...

, Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...

, J.D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

 and Richard Wright

Richard Wright (author)

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...

. Other authors published in the pages of Story included Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers was an American writer. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South...

 and William Saroyan

William Saroyan

William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

.

The magazine sponsored various awards (WPA, Armed Forces), and it held an annual college fiction contest.

Later Years

Burnett's second wife, Hallie Southgate Burnett, began collaborating with him in 1942. During this period, Story published the early work of Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

, John Knowles

John Knowles

John Knowles was an American novelist best known for his novel A Separate Peace. He died in 2001 at the age of seventy-five.-Early life:...

 and Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...

. Story was briefly published in book form during the early 1950s, returning to a magazine format in 1960. Due to a lack of funds, Story folded in 1967, but it maintained its reputation through the Story College Creative Awards, which Burnett directed from 1966 to 1971.