American author Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) is best known for his science fiction works, but he also wrote non-genre fiction, much of which remained unpublished until after his death. From 1952 to 1960, Dick wrote eleven non-genre novels, only one of which (Confessions of a Crap Artist) was published during his lifetime. Seven more were published posthumously, but the remaining three – A Time for George Stavros, Pilgrim on the Hill and Nicholas and the Higs – are considered lost. Short plot summaries of these works are preserved among the index cards written by employees of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, who were responsible for marketing the novels to publishers, while further information can be derived from Dick's letters, and from the testimony of those who knew him.

Other early works by Dick will likely never be known even by their titles, but evidence exists of two more lost works: a novel called Return to Lilliput, and a short story titled "Menace React".

A Time for George Stavros was written around 1955–56. The Scott Meredith Literary Agency (SMLA) indexed the manuscript on October 24, 1956, but the index card begins "Didn't like this before & still don't", implying that the work had already been rewritten and resubmitted once before this date. The synopsis on the index card reads as follows:

Long, rambling, glum novel about 65 yr old Greek immigrant who has a weakling son, a second son about whom he's indifferent, a wife who doesn't love him (she's being unfaithful to him). Nothing much happens. Guy, selling garage & retiring, tries to buy another garage in new development, has a couple of falls, dies at end. Point is murky but seems to be that world is disintegrating, Stavros supposed to be symbol of vigorous individuality now a lost commodity.

In a letter to the Harcourt Brace editor Eleanor Dimoff, written on February 1, 1960, Dick describes the protagonist of this work as "an old man with enormous appetite, wit, and tenacity, a kind of genius—and yet hopelessly ignorant of the contemporary ways by which men rise to economic and social success". According to Dick, the worldview expressed in the book is as follows:

Contact with vile persons does not blight or contaminate or doom the really superior; a man can go on and be successful, if he just keeps struggling. There is no trick that the wicked can play on the good that will ultimately be successful; the good are protected by God, or at least by their virtue.

The context of this letter was a contract agreed between Dick and Harcourt Brace a few months earlier – despite rejecting all his previous submissions, the company saw promise in Dick and gave him a $500 advance to write a new mainstream novel. Dick proposed to meet this request with a rewriting of George Stavros, which Dimoff had judged to be the best of his non-genre works. The rewrite was submitted in October 1960 under the title of Humpty Dumpty in Oakland. Although Dick had outlined many changes in his letter, the finished manuscript stuck very closely to the plot of George Stavros; the principal difference being in the home life of the main character, now a childless American named Jim Fergesson. Dick's heavy use of George Stavros in the writing of Humpty Dumpty is probably the reason why the manuscript of the former work is no longer extant.

Humpty Dumpty in Oakland was also rejected by Harcourt Brace, but was published by Gollancz in 1986.