The 13 Clocks

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The 13 Clocks
The 13 Clocks (Simont).jpg
Author James Thurber
Illustrator Marc Simont
Cover artist Marc Simont
Country United States
Language English
Genre Fantasy
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date
January 1, 1950
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 124 pp
ISBN 0-671-72100-3
OCLC 25330722

The 13 Clocks is a fantasy tale written by James Thurber in 1950, while he was completing one of his other novels. It is written in a unique cadenced style, in which a mysterious prince must complete a seemingly impossible task to free a maiden from the clutches of an evil duke. It invokes many fairy tale motifs.[1]

The story is noted for Thurber's constant, complex wordplay, and his use of an almost continuous internal meter, with occasional hidden rhymes — akin to blank verse, but with no line breaks to advertise the structure. Other fantasy books by Thurber, such as Many Moons, The Wonderful O (published 1958), and particularly The White Deer, also contained hints of this unusual prose form, but here it becomes a universal feature of the text, to the point where it is possible to predict the word order for a given phrase (for example, "the Golux said" vs. "said the Golux") by looking at the pattern of emphasis in the preceding phrase.

By the time he wrote this book, Thurber was blind, so he could not draw cartoons for the book, as he had done with The White Deer five years earlier. He enlisted his friend Marc Simont to illustrate the original edition. The Golux is said to wear an "indescribable hat". Thurber made Simont describe all his illustrations, and was satisfied when Simont was unable to describe the hat. When it was reissued by Puffin Books, it was illustrated by Ronald Searle. The book has been reprinted by The New York Review Children's Collection, with original illustrations by Marc Simont and an introduction by Neil Gaiman.[2]

Plot summary[edit]

The evil Duke of Coffin Castle lives with his good and beautiful niece, the princess Saralinda. A few days before Saralinda's twenty-first birthday, Prince Zorn of Zorna arrives in the town disguised as a minstrel named Xingu. After meeting an enigmatic character known as the Golux, who declares his intention to help Zorn rescue the Princess, Zorn gets himself arrested and imprisoned.

The Duke gives Zorn the task of finding a thousand jewels. However, the Duke was aware of Zorn's identity all along; therefore, to prevent Zorn from simply traveling to his father's kingdom and back again, the Duke only allows him 99 hours to complete the task. To complicate things further, the Duke commands that when Zorn returns, the thirteen irrevocably frozen clocks in the castle must all be striking five.

Zorn and the Golux travel to the home of Hagga, a woman with the ability to weep jewels, only to discover that she was made to weep so much that she is no longer able to cry. As the realization that they have failed sets in, Hagga begins to laugh inexplicably until she cries, producing an abundance of jewels. Hagga informs them that the magic spell that let her cry tears was altered, so whereas "the jewels of sorrow shall last beyond all common measure", the jewels of laughter shall give "little pleasure": jewels from the tears of happiness will return to the state of tears a fortnight after they are made. The Golux counts out a thousand, and they return to the castle after thanking her.

At the castle, the Duke reveals to his servant Hark that he kidnapped Saralinda as a child and that she is not actually his niece. Under the conditions of a spell cast on the Duke as he fled with the Princess, the Duke may not marry Saralinda until she is twenty-one; furthermore, the spell prophecies that the Duke will be destroyed and Saralinda saved by a man whose name begins with "x" and doesn't. Hark reminds the confident Duke that Zorn was called Xingu while he was posing as a minstrel, and therefore he is the man mentioned in the spell.

While the furious Duke and his guards are fighting Zorn, the Golux and the Princess sneak throughout the castle to each of the thirteen clocks, using Saralinda's warmth to start them once more. Presented with the thousand jewels and the sound of the thirteen clocks striking, the Duke is forced to admit defeat. Zorn and the Princess happily depart, first to Yarrow (where Saralinda's father the good King Gwain lives) on their way to Zorna, then eventually to the distant shining shores of Ever After.

A fortnight later, while the Duke is gloating over his jewels, they melt back into Hagga's tears. The angry Duke is then confronted by a nightmarish creature called the Todal, "sent [by the devil] to punish [him] for having done less evil than [he] should." Faced with his failure and the loss of his jewels, the wrathful Duke dares the Todal to attack. The story ends with Hark entering an empty room to find the Duke's sword on the floor and a puddle of tears dripping from the table; in the distance, he can just make out the sound of someone laughing.


Boucher and McComas praised the book as "magically adorned with touches of modern humor, hints of dark Jacobean terror, and gleams of pure poetry.".[3]

Stage, film and audio[edit]

The story was set to music by Mark Bucci and appeared in 1953 as the 5th episode of The Motorola Television Hour, with Basil Rathbone as the evil Duke.[4]

It was also adapted and produced by Stephen Teeter for use in the 1960s in a production in Berkeley, CA. Later it was adapted and produced by Frank Lowe for stage, and published in 1976 by Samuel French, Inc [ISBN 978-0-573-65122-9].

Audio recordings have also been produced, performed by Lauren Bacall (Pathways of Sound, POS 1039 & 1040), Peter Ustinov (Caedmon Audio, ISBN 978-0-898-45429-1) and Edward Woodward (Phoenix Audio, ISBN 978-1-597-77688-2). The BBC produced a radio version of the story with Heron Carvic as the Golux.

A three part Jackanory adaptation was broadcast on BBC One 28-30 December 1983 starring Colin Jeavons as the Duke, Roy Kinnear as the Golux, Yolande Palfrey as Saralinda and Simon Shepherd as Prince Zorn.

Christopher Theofanidis wrote an opera based on the story in 2002.


  2. ^ James Thurber, The 13 Clocks, ISBN 978-1-59017-275-9
  4. ^ "The Motorola Television Hour" The Thirteen Clocks (1953)

External links[edit]

  • "The Motorola Television Hour", 1953[1]