The World's Greatest Short Stories: Selections from Hemingway, Tolstoy, Woolf, Chekhov, Joyce, Updike and more

This was a very good collection. Some friends and I used it for a short story club. It offers a wide variety of stories, including several authors I had never heard of before. Almost every story was worth reading and discussing, and I think it’s a good, affordable volume. One thing I found curious is that the volume does not provide a list of all translations used. Also, one should note that there are basically no notes or editorial material here. I personally didn’t mind that, but I could see someone needing more of an apparatus with the book. All the same, this worked for my purposes, and I thought each translation was a good one, even if I would like to know who the translations were by.

Good stories, although it’s missing the only short story I wanted. I couldn’t find a full list of stories, so I took a chance and lost. They may not be the “best,” but they are good stories.

The quality of the the stories selected for this work is very high. Short stories are ubiqitous enough but a superior collection like this is rare, indeed. The strengths of each author are evident. Each presents a new world for the reader to walk through. The contest between the Prussian Captain and the soldier is exciting as well as grotesque. Are we rooting for one or the other? Does Kafka's hunger artist cause sympathy or revulsion in the reader? Are we secretly happy to see the hunger artist die? And did you ask yourself, Do we not get what we deserve, when reading The Necklace? There are so many things we read that are less than satisfying. For me The World's Greatest Short Stories is not one of them.

I will preface this review by stating what should be obvious to all, which is that there are many ways that one can evaluate a book—or any creative work, for that matter. And I, naturally, am going to focus on a few aspects that matter to ME. To begin, let's acknowledge that this is a very inexpensive purchase, and its construction is commensurate with the price: pages are likely to drift away regularly, like oak leaves in autumn, and The World's Greatest Short Stories will simply not be around for the long haul, as they say. However, if you're just hoping to pass the time agreeably while resting your aching dogs at JFK, you'll be fine. But more importantly, let's talk about the content: there are several well-known and brilliant works of fiction in this collection that will not fail to entertain new readers or engage the attention of repeat readers, like a long-lost old friend. However. There are also a few stories here that are written from a point of view which I like to term, The Great Abyss. You have probably been to a similar place of despair in your own consciousness, or at least have peered over the edge briefly, before rapidly (and wisely) returning to safety. The adjective that keeps coming to my mind—and, yes, it is an old-fashioned word that has fallen out of fashion—is "depraved." BUT, I hear you say, these are all the works of great authors! And that may be, depending on your definition of greatness. Nevertheless, great human beings are capable of great evil and darkness; in fact, they may be more capable than your Average Joe, I'm inclined to think. For the reasons mentioned, small and large, I am unable to give full marks to this volume from Dover Thrift Editions.

I bought this short story collection to break up of the monotony of much longer books, as an interstitial interruption, more or less, and as short style-prep lead-in reads for same-author longer books. In other words, "Bartleby" prepped for "Moby Dick," "The Hunger Artist" for "Amerika," and so on. Inside, there's a good collection -- sample-wise -- of some great authors, and a number of them are arguably their best short story works, like Melville; it is just what I wanted for a nice price. "Bartleby", "The Lady..." and "Araby" are worth the price alone.

This is the second time I've read this collection of short stories written by many authors from around the world from the second half if the 19th century and first half of the 20th. I will probably read it several more times. Why? Because I have always loved short stories and I don't have to read the whole book but can pick and choose the ones I want to read again.

I am using this with a class I'm teaching this semester, entirely because of its low cost--I wanted access to a few famous stories, and didn't want to rely on the Internet. I'm writing this because of a bizarre mistake I discovered yesterday with Chekhov's "Lady With the Pet Dog." The version in this anthology has the main character named "Gomov." As anyone who knows this story will remember, the main character's name is "Gurov." The rest of the translation seems passable/accurate (I'm no Russian lit scholar), but the misnaming is very odd. Gurov is one of literature's better-known characters. I've been trying to track down the source of this error, but with no luck, and the Dover book is so bare-bones it doesn't even list the translator (I did find what appears to be the same translation in a pdf online, but it has even worse errors--the town where the couple first meet is referred to as "Talta"!!!). Anyway, this is an okay anthology, but I guess you get what you pay for!

Dover books are unsurpassed for economy and content - $3.50 for a collection of 20 stories from all over the world within the past two centuries. Would be a great teaching resource, as many of these stories are used in curricula for middle/high school and college. Table of contents lists author, country of origin and year written. Relatively diverse selection of authors, but also includes standard anthology fare like Hemingway and Woolf. Stories included: Bartleby the Scrivener (1853, Melville) The Necklace (1884, de Maupassant) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886, Tolstoy) The Man Who Would Be King (1888, Kipling) The Yellow Wallpaper (1892, C.P. Gilman) The Fortune-Teller (1896, Machado de Assis) The Lady with the Toy Dog (1899, Chekhov) How Old Timofei Died with a Song (1900, Rilke) The Path to the Cemetery (1901, Mann) The Prussian Officer (1914, D.H. Lawrence) Araby (1914, Joyce) Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law (1917, Pirandello) The Mark on the Wall (1921, Woolf) A Hunger Artist (1922, Kafka) The Garden-Party (1922, Mansfield) The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket (1924, Kawabata) A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1926, Hemingway) The Sacrifical Egg (1959, Achebe) A & P (1961, Updike) Borges and I (1962, Borges)

A great collection of 20 very enjoyable, very different short stories from some of the best writers around the world - England, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, USA, Russia, Czechoslavakia. Some writers I knew but some were new to me. All the stories were very readable and engrossing. Stories are collated in chronological order and written from 1853-1962.

I have been delivered a different version of the book shown here but it was good as well.

Ho comprato questo libro per praticare la lettura in inglese. Devo dire che nonostante la mia volontà le storie contenute non attraggono molto... forse è questione di gusti.

Ce recueil possède de très bons auteurs. J'aime beaucoup. Il contient : Herman Melville--U.S.A. Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) Guy de Maupassant--France The Necklace (1884) Leo Tolstoy--Russia The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) Rudyard Kipling--England The Man Who Would Be King (1888) Charlotte Perkins Gilman--U.S.A. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis--Brazil The Fortune-Teller (1896) Anton Chekhov--Russia The Lady with the Toy Dog (1899) Rainer Maria Rilke--Germany How Old Timofei Died with a Song (1900) Thomas Mann--Germany The Path to the Cemetery (1901) D. H. Lawrence--England The Prussian Officer (1914) James Joyce--Ireland Araby (1914) Luigi Pirandello--Italy Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law (1917) Virginia Woolf--England The Mark on the Wall (1921) Franz Kafka--Czechoslovakia A Hunger Artist (1922) Katherine Mansfield--England The Garden-Party (1922) Yasunari Kawabata--Japan The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket (1924) Ernest Hemingway--U.S.A. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1926) Chinua Achebe--Nigeria The Sacrificial Egg (1959) John Updike--U.S.A. A & P (1961) Jorge Luis Borges--Argentina Borges and I (1962)

The selection couldn't be better. The price is amazing. A great read. The paper isn't the nicest but it's not terrible.