Shortly after Stockton published "The Lady, or the Tiger?," he and his wife left on an extended European vacation. Thus, he missed much of the initial debate that swirled around his story. Martin Griffin In his 1939 biography of Stockton said that "notices of the strange dilemma proposed by the story began to appear in newspapers and critical reviews." The poet Robert Browning believed the man chose the door with the tiger, and Griffin suggested that Stockton weighted the story towards that conclusion. Many other readers, famous and not-so famous, debated the ending in various public and literary forums. The controversy was so vibrant that when Stockton returned to the United States he was deluged with letters. In response to the story's popularity, he wrote a similar story with a trick ending called "The Discourager of.....
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