"IF WE HAVE A LITERARY FORM THAT EXPRESSES US AS A PEOPLE, IT IS THE NERVOUS, FORMAL,CONCENTRATED, BRIEF, AND PENETRATING ONE OF THE SHORT STORY." -from the Introduction

This outstanding collection of short stories by twentysix of America's most celebrated writers provides a comprehensive survey of the origin and growth of this literary form.

The selections in this volume represent each author working at the very height of his or her powers,producing memorable, brilliant fiction. Each story,too, is illustrative of the growth of the short story form, done to perfection by the writers who left their indelible mark on our national literary heritage.

A century and a quarter ago, on January 14, 1832,Edgar Allan Poe published in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier the story "Metzengerstein," in which he utilized for the first time the techniques of the single effect upon which the modern short story has been built. What began, as an American invention has remained an American specialty: of all the practitioners of the short story in English, the greatest ones, with .perhaps a half dozen exceptions in 125 years, have been Americans.Of the six exceptions, Kipling was an Indian colonial, Conrad a deracinated Pole, Joyce and O"Connor Irishmen, Katherine Mansfield a New Zealander, and only D. H. Lawrence a bona fide Englishman. In the same years America has produced not only Poe and Hawthorne, who together created the short story as a form, but Henry James, Stephen Crane, Sher wood Anderson, Ring Larduer, Ernest Hemingway,William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and two dozen less welI known but greatly talented writers, who have taken what Poe and Hawthorne bequeathed them and enricheded and enlarged and subtilized and intensified it. Partly because of this early start, partly because of the conditions of American diversity and the nature of American journalism...

Introduction 9

WASHINGTON IRVING

Rip Van Winkle 31

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Young Goodman Brown 53

EDGAR ALLAN POE

The Fall of the House of Usher 69

HERMAN MELVILLE

Bartleby the Scrivener 92

MARK TWAIN

Baker"s Bluejay Yarn 156

BRET HARTE

Tennessee"s Parmer 142

AMBROSE  BIERCE

The Boarded Window 154

HENRY JAMES

The Real Thing 160

MARY WILKINS FREEMAN

A Village Singer 191

HAMLIN GARLAND

Mrs. Pipley"s Trip 208

O. HENRY

A Municipal Report 222

EDITH  WHARTON

 Roman Fever 241

STEPHEN CRANE

 The Open Boat 257

SHERWOOD ANDERSON"

 Unlighted Lamps 287

WILBUR  DANIEL  STEELE

 The Man Who Saw through Heaven 309

CONRAD AIKEN

 Silent Snow, Secret Snow 332

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

 He 354

JAMES  THURBER

 The Catbird Seat 367

WILLIAM MARCH

 The Little Wife 379

WILLIAM JAULKNER

 Wash 394

JOHN STEINBECK

 The Snake 410

PAUL HORGAN

 To the Mountains 425

JOHN O"HARA

 Over the River and through the Wood 454

WALTER VAN TILBURG CLARK

 The Wind and the Snow of Winter 462

LUDORA WELTY

 Powerhouse 478

HORTENSE CALISHER

 In Greenwich There Are

 Many Gravelled Walks 493