Every Stephen King Story Set in Derry

Stephen King created a number of fictional towns in his home state of Maine, where he set many of his most important stories. They include Castle Rock (which is something of an unofficial capital for King’s universe) and Jerusalem’s Lot, which served as the title of his second novel. Fans of It, however, will always associate his work with Derry, where Pennywise the Clown performs his ghoulish rites every 27 years.

Since the publication of that seminal novel, the author has periodically returned to Derry, and fans will get a whole new look at the town in 2025 when the Welcome to Derry series is set to premiere on Max. Dozens of King stories and novels have mentioned Derry in passing, though only eight have actually been set in the town as of this writing. They’re listed below in order of publication, along with a description of the part the town plays in their narrative, and what the author reveals about Derry in the process.

8

It Is Still Derry’s Central Narrative

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It, of course, is the Derry story to beat all Derry stories by encompassing both the origins of the town and its most notorious boogieman, Pennywise the Dancing Clown. King based Derry on his adopted home of Bangor, and more specifically on the elaborate sewer system that runs the length of the real-life town. In It, those tunnels become Pennywise’s lair. Bangor also has a grim history of disasters in its past — including regular flooding and five major fires between 1856 and 1911 — which served as the basis for Pennywise’s periodic reigns of terror.

King finished his first draft of the novel in 1981, and published an excerpt called “The Bird and the Album” shortly thereafter. It appeared in A Fantasy Reader: The Seventh World Fantasy Convention Book which was given to attendees of the titular convention in Berkeley, CA. It later appeared in the final text of It as part of Chapter 13, called simply “The Album.” That constitutes the first ever mention of Derry in a Stephen King work.

It Chapter One

In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.

Director

Andy Muschietti

Release Date

September 5, 2017

Cast

Sophia Lillis
, Jaeden Lieberher
, Jeremy Ray Taylor
, FInn Wolfhard
, Wyatt Oleff
, Chosen Jacobs
, Jack Dylan Grazer
, Bill Skarsgard

Runtime

2 hours 15 minutes

7

Secret Window, Secret Garden Uses Derry to Reflect Its Protagonist

“Secret Window, Secret Garden” is a novella that originally appeared in the 1990 collection Four Past Midnight, and concerns a subject near and dear to the author’s heart. A successful writer named Mort Rainey (another thinly veiled stand-in for King himself) receives an unsettling visit from a Mississippi man named Shooter who claims Mort plagiarized one of his works.

The setting itself is incidental, as the narrative focuses on Mort’s emotional state rather than the place he’s in. He did live in Derry, however, and only recently moved away after discovering his wife cheating on him “in one of Derry’s finer motels.” That matches one of King’s core themes — small, petty sins attracting more overtly supernatural beings — which Derry represents in spades. The story takes place after the Losers have vanquished Pennywise for good, suggesting that some sinister spiritual residue may yet remain.

Secret Window

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