50 Great Short Stories

by Milton Crane (Editor)

Paperback, 1962

Status

Available

Call number

813.0108

Genres

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Bantam (1962), Mass Market Paperback, 470 pages

Description

"50 Great Short Stories is a comprehensive selection from the world's finest short fiction ..."--Cover.

User reviews

LibraryThing member stypulkoski

This is a great collection of short stories, with a nice mix of well known tales with a few which are lesser known.

Ideal to put in your pocket and take with you when you know you're going to have thirty minutes to an hour to kill.

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LibraryThing member micronoclast

Among other great stories, this book contains a wonderful short story called "Murke's Collected Silences," by Heinrich Böll, which I've often thought about, even though many years have since passed.

LibraryThing member datrappert

These are in no way the 50 greatest short stories. Many of them aren't even the best story by that writer. The editor does say, however, that he passed over some more frequently anthologized stories. As a result, much of what is here is not so familiar to me. It is a curious mid-20th Century

snapshot of the tastes of the editor and the 500 professors of English at American colleges and universities he asked to make nominations. Some of the choices are indeed classics, such as Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. Others are perfection, such as Salinger's For Esme--With Love and Squalor, Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Phoenix, or John Collier's The Chaser. There are lots of lesser known authors as well--at least from 21st Century perspective, although I had heard of most of them. Other pleasures include V.S. Pritchett's The Saint, Max Beerbohm's A.V. Laider (anything by Beerbohm seems to deliver pleasure), and Edith Wharton's The Other Two. And there are others. In addition, there are a few stories that don't seem to meet the definition of "Great" under any circumstance--but I'll leave those for you to discover. Chances are they won't be the same ones on my list. That's a great thing about a book like this; there is something for just about everyone.

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LibraryThing member Zoes_Human

What a wonderful collection of short stories!

While all the stories might be considered classics, there was quite a range. Stories to make you think about life and stories to make you laugh. There are tales of horror (Poe), alternate history, and speculative fiction (not sci-fi really, think along

the lines of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery").

Among the classics I had previously read, I was delighted to find both unfamiliar stories by familiar authors and unfamiliar stories by unfamiliar authors that I intend to read more of.

While I enjoyed every story, my favorites were "The Other Side of the Hedge" by E.M Forster, "Putois" by Anatole France, "The Schartz-Metterklume Method" by "Saki" (H.H. Munro), and "The Chaser" by John Collier (the final story and a great way to end a book).

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