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The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

Daniel Defoe

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .I cannot imagine; because the generality believe her to be a good spirit, her discourse was so heavenly. Her two great errands were, to comfort Mrs. Bargrave in her affliction, and to ask her forgiveness for her breach of friendship, and with a pious discourse to encourage her. So that, after all, to suppose that Mrs. Bargrave could hatch such an invention as this, from Friday noon to Saturday noon—supposing that she knew of Mrs. Veal's death the very first moment—without jumbling circumstances, and without any interest, too, she must be more witty, fortunate, and wicked, too, than any indifferent person, I dare say, will allow. I asked Mrs. Bargrave several times if she was sure she felt the gown. She answered, modestly, "If my senses be to be relied on, I am sure of it." I asked her if she heard a sound when she clapped her hand upon her knee. She said she did not remember she did, but said she appeared to be as much a substance as I did who talked with her. "And I may," . . . Read More

Community Reviews

A couple of gems (Poe, Twain, Stockton), but in general a bit too out of date for my taste.

It's clear the academics or publishers or schoolchildren who compiled these stories thought them exemplary of both the quality and history of the English-language short story. If that's true, I'll stick to novels. There were some good stories in here. But sadly, no great ones. And the bad ones (Jame

Bit of a mix, some good, some mediocre - or perhaps just too distant, mostly being written in the 1700s to 1800s -- and one frankly awful. That one story I didn't like and pretty much just skimmed was Henry James' 'Julia Bride' which I found terribly irritating -- one sentence telling you what happe