The American Short Story: A Collection of the Best Known and Most Memorable Short Stories by the Great American Authors

by Thomas K. Parkes

Book Overview

An entertaining collection features short stories from the past two hundred years, and includes the world of Washington Irving, Truman Capote, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Edith... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0883658739
• ISBN13: 9780883658734
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: BBS Publishing Corporation
• Length: 1024 Pages
• Weight: 3.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The ideal set of choices

This collection combines 150 years (1819 to 1960's) of short fiction by those authors you've always heard of, but never quite got around to reading. It starts with Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," which has a corker of an ending you might not know about if you've never really read the story. And that's a great start to a series of wonderful surprises for those of us who haven't read quite as much mainstream fiction as we'd like to think (or claim). The collection progresses chronologically by author's birthdate, including over 50 writers's works. You'll recognize nearly every name (Bierce, Crane, Thurber, Steinbeck, Welty, Vonnegut, etc.), which ought to be enough to let you know this really is what its subtitle claims. The only pause I was given arose from the sudden end of the parade in the 1960s, while the book came out in 1994. Was there nothing worth including from the ensuing 30 years? Maybe copyright law has something to do with it, but the introduction doesn't say. Regardless, this is a fine, venerable compendium that might be the starting place for a new writer, or a resting place for an old reader. It's 1,000 pages long; given the names on those pages, the price is virtually nothing, while its value is incalculable.