The short story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their stories round the savage campfire."
The short story is today our most common literary product. It is read by everyone. Not every boy or girl will read novels after leaving school, but every boy or girl is certain to read short stories. It is important in the high school to guide taste and appreciation in short story reading, so that the reading of days when school life is over will be healthful and encouraging.
Here is a collection that is entirely modern. The authors represented are among the leading authors of the day, the stories are principally stories of present-day life, the themes are themes of present-day thought. The students who read this book will be more awake to the present, and will be better citizens of today.
The great number of stories presented has given opportunity to illustrate different types of short story writing.
Contents:
Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Edgar Allan Poe. The Gold Bug
Herman Melville. Bartleby, the Scrivener
Bret Harte. The Luck of Roaring Camp
Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Rudyard Kipling. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper
Anton Chekhov. The Lady with the Dog
D.H. Lawrence. The Prussian Officer
James Joyce. Araby
Ivan Turgenev. First Love
Nikolay Gogol. The Mantle
Mikhail Bulgakov. The Embroidered Towel
Ivan Bunin. The Gentleman from San Francisco
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla
O.Henry. The Gift of the Magi
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
H.G. Wells. The Magic Shop
W.W. Jacobs. The Monkey's Paw
Arthur Conan Doyle. His Last Bow
Henry James. Daisy Miller
H.P. Lovecraft. The Call of Cthulhu
Alexsandr Pushkin. The Queen of Spades
G.K. Chesterton. The Blue Cross