Our Collection | The Short Story Project

USA

When I was eighteen I wanted something to do. I had tried teaching for two years, and hated it; I had tried sewing, and could not earn my bread in that way, at the cost of...

How I Went Out to Service

Louisa May Alcott

23 min

USA

Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living, and there was not wife or...

The Brothers

Louisa May Alcott

33 min

USA

Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat–markets, past single–storied homes, until suddenly it stops against a wide green...

Of the Coming of John

W. E. B. Du Bois

23 min

USA

He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—...

The Comet

W. E. B. Du Bois

20 min

USA

“It is perfectly clear,” said my wife, pointing to the sign on the door. “It is perfectly absurd,” I answered and yet there it stood written: “Prof Johnson, Laboratory in Sociology. Hours 9 until 3.” We...

Princess Steel

W. E. B. Du Bois

19 min

USA

When the call came I remember that I turned from the tele- phone in a romantic flutter. Though I had spoken only once to the great surgeon, Roland Maradick, I felt on that December afternoon that...

The Shadowy Third

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

I had no sooner entered the house than I knew something was wrong. Though I had never been in so splendid a place before—it was one of those big houses just off Fifth Avenue—I had a...

The Past

Ellen Glasgow

39 min

USA

Twilights were wonderful just after the war. They hung above New York like indigo wash, forming themselves from asphalt dust and sooty shadows under the cornices and limp gusts of air exhaled from closing windows, to...

A Millionaire’s Girl

Zelda Fitzgerald

18 min

USA

The summer of 1924 shriveled the trees in the Champs-Elysees to a misty blue till they swayed before your eyes as if they were about to go down under the gasoline fumes. Before July was out,...

A Couple Of Nuts

Zelda Fitzgerald

19 min

USA

Bitter things dried behind the eyes of Miss Ella like garlic on a string before an open fire. The acrid fumes of sweet memories had gradually reddened their rims until at times they shone like the...

Miss Ella

Zelda Fitzgerald

11 min

After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...

Bernice Bobs Her Hair

F. Scott Fitzgerald

35 min

UK

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr. Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at...

Rain

William Somerset Maugham

60 min

UK

No one knew better than he that he was an important person. He was number one in not the least important branch of the most important English firm in China. He had worked his way up...

The Taipan

William Somerset Maugham

12 min

Israel

It was difficult to explain the true nature of her journey. After some deliberation, she decided to mention it only in passing: for her fortieth birthday, she would take a kind of pilgrimage in Sigmund Freud’s...

Sigmund Freud Slept Here

Orna Reuven

14 min

USA

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against...

Hills Like White Elephants

Ernest Hemingway

5 min

USA

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came...

In Another Country

Ernest Hemingway

8 min

USA

The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. “What’s yours?” George asked them. “I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat,...

The Killers

Ernest Hemingway

11 min

USA

“Don’t tell me!” said old Mis’ Briggs, with a forbidding shake of the head; “no mother that was a mother would desert her own child for anything on earth!” “And leaving it a care on the...

The Unnatural Mother

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

12 min

USA

“There won’t be many more such good times as these for us,” said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; “we’ve got to go out into the...

Five Girls

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5 min

New Zealand

Getting ready was a terrible business. After supper Frau Brechenmacher packed four of the five babies to bed, allowing Rosa to stay with her and help to polish the buttons of Herr Brechenmacher’s uniform. Then she...

Frau Brechenmacher Attends A Wedding

Katherine Mansfield

9 min

New Zealand

I think it must be the umbrellas which make us look ridiculous. When I was admitted into the enclosure for the first time, and saw my fellow-bathers walking about very nearly “in their nakeds,” it struck...

The Luft Bad

Katherine Mansfield

4 min

USA

It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support. But there was something happy about the...

The Gilded Six-Bits

Zora Neale Hurston

18 min

UK

People are accustomed to think of Somerset as a country of deep, bosky bays, sunny coves, woods, moorlands, but Hemerton was in itself sufficient to blur this bland illusion. It lay a mile and a half...

Hodge

Elinor Mordaunt

31 min

USA

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western...

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Ernest Hemingway

36 min