Chace wrote "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" in 1940 to demonstrate that the intonation of spoken English is almost as important to the meaning as the words themselves. It was first published in Gene Sherman's "Cityside" column in the Los Angeles Times in 1953. Chace collected his stories and poems in the book Anguish Languish (Prentice-Hall, 1956). Lathourakis published the story as a miniature book in 1978.