The Maples Stories (Posthumous): A Reference

The Maples Stories (2009) is a posthumous collection gathering all eighteen stories about Joan and Richard Maple, the married couple whose relationship Updike tracked across two decades of short fiction, primarily in The New Yorker. Published by Everyman’s Library/Knopf with an introduction by Updike that he wrote before his death, the collection presents the Maple stories as a unified sequence for the first time — a short-fiction counterpart to the Rabbit tetralogy that traces an American marriage from its hopeful beginning through its deterioration, divorce, and aftermath.

Publication Details

Publisher: Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, New York Publication date: 2009 Format: Hardcover (Everyman’s Library format)

The stories were previously published across multiple Updike story collections spanning 1956–1987. The posthumous collection gathers them in chronological order, making the marriage narrative visible as a continuous arc.

Signed Copies

As a posthumous publication, the book was not signed by Updike. Unsigned copies are available at modest prices ($15–$30) and are valued as reading copies rather than collectibles.

The Maple Marriage

The Maple stories are widely regarded as among the finest American short stories about marriage — its comforts, betrayals, negotiations, and ultimate dissolution. The stories are closely autobiographical, reflecting Updike’s first marriage to Mary Pennington, and they display the kind of intimate, painfully precise observation of domestic life that Updike did better than anyone.

Collecting Context

For collectors, The Maples Stories serves as a companion volume to the signed first editions of the story collections in which the individual Maple stories originally appeared — Pigeon Feathers, The Music School, Museums and Women, Too Far to Go, and Trust Me. The posthumous collection provides the convenient reading text; the original collections provide the bibliographic first editions.