misc. authors - The World’s Best Short Stories

The
worlds best
short stories

The
worlds best
short stories

Srishti

P UBLISHERS & D ISTRIBUTORS

S RISHTI P UBLISHERS & D ISTRIBUTORS

64-A, Adhchini
Sri Aurobindo Marg
New Delhi 110 017

Copyright S rishti Publishers & Distributors 2000
This edition published by
Srishti Publishers & Distributors 2000

ISBN 81-87075-54-6
Rs. 195.00

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Editorial Board

Richard le Oallienne

Author and critic. Author of The Book-BUIs of Narcissus. Prose Fancies Retrospective Reviews. Rudyard Kipling: a Criticism. For many years engaged in literary and journalistic work in the U.S.A.

Sir Edmund Qosse, C.B., LL.D.

Critic, biographer and poet. Librar an House of Lords 1904-1914, Clark Lecturer in English Literature at Cambridge University and translator to Board of Trade. Was in 1913 crowned by the French Academy. Author of many notable books in prose and verse.

Sir John Hammerton

Author and editor. Author of George Meredith: His Life and Art, Steven-soniana, English Humorists of To-day, Barrie: the Story of a Genius: editor of the New Punch Library, Charles Dickens Library, the Fine Art Scott, the Worlds Great books.

Professor Brander Matthews, Litt.D., D.C.L.

Professor of Literature 1892-1900, and Professor of Dramatic Literature, 1900-24, Columbia University; wrote much on fiction and the drama, including Aspects of Fiction, The Historical Novel, Molidre: his Life and Work.

Sir William Robertson, Nicoll, M.A., LL.D.

Critic and journalist. Founderand editor of The British Weekly and The Bookman. Edited the complete works of Charlotte Bronte: author of A Bookmans Letters, The Problem of Edwin Drood, The Daybook of Claudius Clear.

Professor Sir Arthur QuillerCouch, M.A., Litt.D.

King Edward VII Professor of English Literature, Cambridge University. Author of Adventures in.Criticism, On the Art of Writing, and many works of fiction, poems and ballads.

Professor George Saintsbury, M.A* LL.D., D.Litt.

For twenty years Professor of Rhetoric and . English Literature, Edinburgh University. Author of History of Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature, The English Novel, French Novelists,History of the French Novel, The Flourishing of Romance,

Professor Thomas Seccombe, M.A.

Professor In English, Queens University, Kingston. Ontario. 1921-23. Lecturer at Owens and East London Colleges, assistant editor Dictionary of National Biography; author of The Bookman History of English Literature.

Clement K. Shorter

Literary critic, biographer and editor. Author of Charlotte Bronte and her Circle, The Brontes: Life and Letters, George Borrow. Founded The Sketch and The Sphere, and was for many years editor of The Illustrated London News.

Professor W. P. Trent, LL.D., D.C.L.

Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Columbia University, U.S.A. Editor Balzacs Comedie Humaine, Poems and Tales of E. A. Poe; author of History of American Literature. Authority of Criticism, Introduction to the English Classics, Biography of Defoe (10 vols.).

Carl van Doren, Ph.D.

Author, critic, editor. Associate Professor in English at Columbia University, New York, since 1916. Author of Life of Thomas Love Peacock, Contemporary American Novelists, and co-editor of The Cambridge History of American Literature.

Sir Frederick Wedmore

Critic and author. His works included The Life of Balzac, and On Books and Arts He was also the writer of many brilliant short stories.

Editorial Note

A SHORT story may be a mere anecdote of three hundred words or a Work of ten or fifteen thousand. In content it may be anything from a glimpse of character, an incident to a highly finished picture of life. But it should be a complete work of imagination, its effect achieved with a minimum of personages and events.

To select the best thousand examples was a task that could be achieved Only on arbitrary lines. As to length, three thousand words was the ideal average, but- this excluded some of the finest stories, so exceptions had to be allowed. National characteristics also had consideration. Another test was the value of a story as illustrating the development of the art. !

PROBLEMS of arrangement were not entirely solved by classification according to the country of each writers origin. This puts Richard Steele into, the Irish volume and separates those ideal literary partners Agnes and Egerton Castle. But it is the best possible arrangement for the work, and the index makes reference easy. The inclusion of a series Of Stories of the War became possible when the War itself ruled out all modern German work.

A WORD as to the method of selection. The General Editor prepared a trial list of titles which were submitted to all the members of the Editorial Board, who rejected and added according to their individual tastes and knowledge. These individual lists were then Collated and the final list evolved. The thousand stories selected are therefore representative of the combined opinion of the whole group of editors. A very few modifications of the final list were made necessary by difficulties of copyright and considerations of Anglo-Saxon taste in (certain translations from foreign literatures.

MOST of the foreign stories have been specially translated, and all copyrights, in both stories and translations, the use of which authors and publishers have courteously permitted, are duly credited at the end of each volume.

Contents of Volume VII