Perhaps it is some kinship between the short-story form and theurgency of the modem age that explains why, with hardly anymarketing outlets, with little reward to the author in either fameor money, the short story continues to be a rich and fertile strainof literary expression. At its best, it achieves a degree of per-fection rarely attained by the novel. Indeed, the distinctive powerand beauty of the short story are involved in its very brevity, thediscipline of its strict limits challenging the writer to ever morebrilliant inventiveness in such areas as symbolism, suggestive-ness and plotting.

  The short-story form continues to be a rich and tertile vein of literary expression.Collected in this remarkable volume are twenty renowned writers ot the modern age who brilliantly mastered the distinctive power and beauty of the form--each bringing their own unique vision to the page.

INTRODUCTION

The Tell-Tale Heart

  Edgar Allan Poe

The Jewels

  Guy de Maupassant

Gooseberries

  Anton Chekhov

The Tree of Knowledge

  Henry James

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

  Ernest Hemingway

Youth

  Joseph Conrad

The Rocking-Horse Winner

  D. H. Lawrence

Bliss

  Katherine Mansfield

The Dead

  James Joyce

Little Herr Friedemann

  Thomas Mann

Sophistication

  Sherwood Anderson

The Story of My Dovecot

  Isaac Babel

The Devil and Daniel Webster

  Stephen Vincent Benet

A Rose for Emily

  William Faulkner

The Metamorphosis (Part I)

  Franz Kafka

TheWall

  Jean-Paul Satire

Judas

  Frank O"Connor

Of This Time, Of That Place

  Lionel Trilling

The Lottery

  Shirley Jackson

The Ledge

  Lawrence Sargent Hall