Our Collection – The Short Story Project

USA

There is a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester’s noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colours. The streets swarm with humanity,–humanity in all shapes, manners, forms, laughing, pushing, jostling,...

A Carnival Jangle

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

4 min

USA

I. “And she tied a bunch of violets with a tress of her pretty brown hair.” She sat in the yellow glow of the lamplight softly humming these words. It was Easter evening, and the newly...

Violets

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

2 min

USA

When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint, swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone, crouching in a little,...

Little Miss Sophie

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

9 min

USA

Sister Josepha told her beads mechanically, her fingers numb with the accustomed exercise. The little organ creaked a dismal “O Salutaris,” and she still knelt on the floor, her white-bonneted head nodding suspiciously. The Mother Superior...

Sister Josepha

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

9 min

USA

Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that...

The Goophered Grapevine

Charles W. Chesnutt

22 min

USA

We found old Julius very useful when we moved to our new residence. He had a thorough knowledge of the neighborhood, was familiar with the roads and the watercourses, knew the qualities of the various soils...

Mars Jeems’s Nightmare

Charles W. Chesnutt

25 min

USA

I Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The...

The Wife of His Youth

Charles W. Chesnutt

18 min

USA

I When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet...

The Passing of Grandison

Charles W. Chesnutt

26 min

USA

What boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine. Every day there was a real hunt. There was real game. Occasionally...

Hadakah, “The Pitiful Last”

Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman)

7 min

Denmark

Far out in the sea the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest of cornflowers, and as clear as the clearest glass; but it is very deep, deeper than any anchor-cable can reach,...

The Little Mermaid

Hans Christian Andersen

36 min

UK

It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the...

The Young King

Oscar Wilde

21 min

UK

“She promised she’d dance with me if I brought her a red rose,” cried a young heart-broken student. “But there’s not one in this whole garden.” From her nest in the oak tree, the Nightingale heard...

The Nightingale and the Rose

Oscar Wilde

5 min

UK

The statue of the Happy Prince stood high above the city. It was covered with gold, its eyes were bright blue jewels, and a red jewel hung from its waist. Everyone thought that it was very...

The Happy Prince

Oscar Wilde

7 min

USA

“Off there to the right—somewhere—is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery——” “What island is it?” Rainsford asked. “The old charts call it ‘Ship-Trap Island,'” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have...

The Most Dangerous Game

Richard Connell

32 min

UK

Such an expression of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one’s eyes slide above the paper’s edge to the poor woman’s face—insignificant without that look, almost a symbol of human destiny with it. Life’s what...

An Unwritten Novel

Virginia Woolf

17 min

UK

The only thing that moved upon the vast semicircle of the beach was one small black spot. As it came nearer to the ribs and spine of the stranded pilchard boat, it became apparent from a...

Solid Objects

Virginia Woolf

9 min

Ukraine

I On the 25th March, 18——, a very strange occurrence took place in St Petersburg. On the Ascension Avenue there lived a barber of the name of Ivan Jakovlevitch. He had lost his family name, and...

The Nose

Nikolai Gogol

36 min

Ukraine

In the department of—but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to...

The Overcoat

Nikolai Gogol

48 min

UK

“Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it set me free. “Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my...

Transformation

Mary Shelley

27 min

UK

July 16, 1833.—This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year! The Wandering Jew?—certainly not. More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. In comparison with him,...

The Mortal Immortal

Mary Shelley

21 min

UK

“Deceived in Freindship and Betrayed in Love.” LETTER the FIRST From ISABEL to LAURA How often, in answer to my repeated intreaties that you would give my Daughter a regular detail of the Misfortunes and...

Love and Freindship

Jane Austen

42 min

UK

Letter the first To Miss Webster My dear Amelia You will rejoice to hear of the return of my amiable Brother from abroad. He arrived on thursday, & never did I see a finer form, save...

Amelia Webster

Jane Austen

1 min

UK

a novel in twelve Chapters. dedicated by permission to Miss Austen. Dedication. Madam You are a Phoenix. Your taste is refined, your Sentiments are noble, & your Virtues innumerable. Your Person is lovely, your Figure, elegant,...

The beautifull Cassandra

Jane Austen

1 min

UK

The delight of his youth had become the burden of his old age. Forty years ago Wormald desired nothing better than to spend a whole day in book-hunting. Regardless of fatigue and of shoe-leather, he tramped...

Two Collectors

George Gissing

5 min

USA

What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?—COMUS. It was a quiet and still afternoon when I strolled forth in the goodly city of Edina. The confusion and bustle in the streets were terrible. Men were...

A Predicament

Edgar Allan Poe

14 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

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

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

“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

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

USA

In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...

The Birthmark

Nathaniel Hawthorne

25 min

New Zealand

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up...

Bliss

Katherine Mansfield

18 min

France

“Ah! madame,” replied the doctor, “I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de...

LA GRANDE BRETÈCHE

Honoré de Balzac

11 min

USA

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...

The Green Door

O. Henry

10 min

Germany

The infant prodigy entered. The hall became quiet. It became quiet and then the audience began to clap, because somewhere at the side a leader of mobs, a born organizer, clapped first. The audience had heard...

The Infant Prodigy

Thomas Mann

12 min

Russia

“Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,” laughed Ivan. “Well, then, I mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an age—as you must have been told at...

The Grand Inquisitor

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25 min

UK

One afternoon I was sitting outside the Cafe de la Paix, watching the splendour and shabbiness of Parisian life, and wondering over my vermouth at the strange panorama of pride and poverty that was passing before...

The Sphinx Without a Secret

Oscar Wilde

5 min

UK

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh,...

A Haunted House

Virginia Woolf

2 min

Russia

So I was alone, surrounded by November gloom and whirling snow; the house was smothered in it and there was a moaning in the chimneys. I had spent all twenty-four years of my life in a...

The Steel Windpipe

Mikhail Bulgakov

8 min

Russia

IT was noon of a bright winter’s day. The air was crisp with frost, and Nadia, who was walking beside me, found her curls and the delicate down on her upper lip silvered with her own...

A Joke

Anton Chekhov

4 min

USA

The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...

A Mighty Nice Man

Patricia Highsmith

8 min

UK

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any...

A Scandal in Bohemia

Arthur Conan Doyle

34 min

UK

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number...

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Arthur Conan Doyle

39 min