The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories, from Washington Irving to Lydia Davis

Kasia Boddy teaches in the English Department at University College London. She has published widely on American topics and her books include Boxing: A Cultural History (2008) and The American Short Story Since 1950 (2010). She has also co-edited several other anthologies, most recently, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer (2009) from Penguin Classics.

The short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It contains a richly diverse cast of characters, including convicts, artists, farm labourers, slaves, soldiers and salesmen, witches and ghosts, families and lovers. Their stories are told by some of America's most celebrated writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Raymond Carver) and a few, like Fanny Fern or Charles W. Chestnutt, who may be less familiar. The collection offers a stimulating combination of acknowledged classics, including Mark Twain's hilarious 'Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog' and Edgar Allan Poe's chilling 'The Tell-Tale Heart', and some remarkable pieces that deserve a wider audience, such as Ernest Hemingway's story of miscommunication, 'Out of Season', or Lorrie Moore's tale of modern love and wit, 'Starving Again'. 
 
Kasia Boddy's introduction traces the history of the American short story and explores the changes and continuities in its forms and preoccupations. This edition also contains a chronology, explanatory and biographical notes and suggestions for further reading. 
 
Table of contents 
Washington Irving - The Little Man in Black (1807) 
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown (1835) 
Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) 
Fanny Fern - Aunt Hetty on Matrimony (1851) 
Mark Twain - Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog (1865) 
Joel Chandler Harris - The Tar Baby Story (1880) 
Mary Wilkins Freeman - Two Friends (1887) 
Charles W. Chesnutt - The Wife of his Youth (1898) 
Henry James - The Real Right Thing (1899) 
Stephen Crane - An Episode of War (1899) 
O. Henry - Hearts and Hands (1903) 
Sherwood Anderson - The Untold Lie (1917) 
Ernest HemingwayOut of Season (1923) 
Edith Wharton - Atrophy (1927) 
Dorothy Parker - New York to Detroit (1928) 
Eudora Welty - The Whistle (1938) 
William Faulkner - Barn Burning (1939) 
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Lost Decade (1939) 
Zora Neale Hurston - Now You Cookin' with Gas (1942) 
Bernard Malamud - The First Seven Years (1950) 
Flannery O'Connor - A Late Encounter with the Enemy (1953) 
John Updike - Sunday Teasing (1956) 
John Cheever - Reunion (1962) 
Grace Paley - Wants (1971) 
Alice Walker - The Flowers (1973) 
Donald Barthelme - I Bought a Little City (1974) 
Raymond Carver - Collectors (1975) 
Richard Ford - Communist (1985) 
Lorrie Moore - Starving Again (1990) 
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Third and Final Continent (1999) 
Lydia Davis - The Caterpillar (2006)

Kasia Boddy

Ali Smith

Sarah Wood

Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer

Love means never having to say you're sorry. No, love is in the air. No, love is the sweetest thing. No, it's soft as an easy chair. No, it's a stranger in an open car. No, it's a many-splendoured thing. No, it's the drug. No, it's like a butterfly. 
 
Oh, let's call the whole thing off. 
 
 
Love stories don't always involve hearts and flowers and walks in the park. This sparkling collection of the world's greatest love quarrels, from Chekhov to Colette, from D. H. Lawrence to Jhumpa Lahiri, features love stories for every mood and occasion. Here are new lovers testing the ground, cosy couples enjoying a quiet squabble before bedtime, and exes intent on picking up where they left off. 
 
Often love quarrels start with trivial matters, such as a bride's new hat in Dorothy Parker's 'Here We Are' or a choice of bedtime book in Jackie Kay's 'You Go When You Can No Longer Stay'. But it doesn't usually take long for the stakes to be raised. Love is a risky business ...

Kasia Boddy

Books by Kasia Boddy

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