Easton Press, "The World's Best Short Stories" Leather Bound Collector's Edition, 12 Vol. Complete Matched Set

Easton Press, Norwalk CT. "The World's Best Short Stories". A complete matching twelve volume set. Each volume is luxuriously bound in full genuine leather. Own all the best short stories in one magnificent collection.

A complete twelve volume set that includes the following titles:

1. Mark Twain Short Stories
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne Short Stories
3. Anton Chekhov Forty Stories
4. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
5. Frank Kafka
6. Jack London Short Stories
7. Joseph Conrad Short Stories
8. Herman Melville Short Stories
9. Stephen Crane Short Stories
10. O. Henry Short Stories
11. Leo Tolstoy Short Stories
12. James Joyce, Dubliners

Mark Twain Short Stories

Illustrated by Penny Havard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Perhaps America's best known literary figure, Mark Twain enjoys a popular following as much for his personality as for his books. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri, he was brought up in Hannibal where his childhood experiences provided the basis for the two masterpieces 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. At the age of twelve the death of his father forced him to leave school and take work as a printer's apprentice to help support the family. But he quickly tired of this life and left to spend four years as a river pilot on the Mississipppi - his pen name coming from the characteristic call of a leadsman on the river. Heading west, Twain spent the Civil War adventuring in Nevada and California with spells as a miner, prospector and reporter. Fame arrived with his story 'The Celbrated Jumping Frog...' but it was an account of his travels of 1867 around France, Italy and Palestine - 'The Innocents Abroad' - that cemented his reputation and made his fortune. In 1870, he married into an old Connecticut family and settled in Hartford. His worldwide fame allowed him lucrative international lecture tours but Twain continued to write steadily for the rest of his life.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Short Stories

Illustrated by Valenti Angelo

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories include "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), "Young Goodman Brown" (1835), and the collection Twice-Told Tales. He is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). His use of allegory and symbolism make Hawthorne one of the most studied writers.

Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne's life was steeped in the Puritan legacy. An early ancestor, William Hathorne, first emigrated from England to America in 1630 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where he became an judge known for his harsh sentencing. William's son, John Hathorne, was one of three judges during the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s. Nathaniel later added a "w" to his name to distance himself from this side of the family.

Anton Chekhov Forty Stories

Illustrated by Alan Phillips

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. Through stories such as "The Steppe" and "The Lady with the Dog," and plays such as The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, the prolific writer emphasized the depths of human nature, the hidden significance of everyday events and the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Chekhov died of tuberculosis on July 15, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. His father, Pavel, was a grocer with frequent money troubles; his mother, Yevgeniya, shared her love of storytelling with Chekhov and his five siblings.

When Pavel's business failed in 1875, he took the family to Moscow to look for other work while Chekhov remained in Taganrog until he finished his studies. Chekhov finally joined his family in Moscow in 1879 and enrolled at medical school. With his father still struggling financially, Chekhov supported the family with his freelance writing, producing hundreds of short comic pieces under a pen name for local magazines.

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Author: Sherwood Anderson

Illustrated by Lynn Pritchard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

In this moving collection of interrelated stories, Ohio-born Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) illuminates the loneliness and frustration - spiritual, emotional and artistic - of life in a small American town. Winesburg, Ohio subtly portrays as well a young writer's coming of age, searching for love, yearning for a less stifling world.

Through the eyes of young George Willard, the inner lives of many of Winesburg's inhabitants open to us. Before George leaves the community, we have learned much about his mother Elizabeth, his friend Helen White, his teacher Kate Swift and other Winesburg residents - the lonely, sensitive Dr. Reefy, the tormented Rev. Charles Hartman and the enigmatic Wing Biddlebaum among them.

Through Anderson's art, their stories are woven into a powerful portrayal of community life, and, ironically, of the isolation its close atmosphere can engender. A great success on its first publication in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio profoundly influenced a generation of fiction writers with its deeply moving poetic realism. It endures as a classic portrait of American life.

Frank Kafka

The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories

Illustrated by Lynn Pritchard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Franz Kafka was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Most of his works, such as "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Prozess (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle), are filled with the themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality, parent-child conflict, characters on a terrifying quest, labyrinths of bureaucracy, and mystical transformations

Jack London Short Stories

Illustrated by Alan Phillips

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. After working in the Klondike, London returned home and began publishing stories. His novels, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Martin Eden, placed London among the most popular American authors of his time. London, who was also a journalist and an outspoken socialist, died in 1916.

Journalist and author John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. Jack, as he came to call himself as a boy, was the son of Flora Wellman, an unwed mother, and William Chaney, an attorney, journalist and pioneering leader in the new field of American astrology.

Joseph Conrad Short Stories

Illustrated by Alan Phillips

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, to Polish parents in Berdichev (now Berdychiv), Ukraine, and was raised and educated primarily in Poland. After a sea-faring career in the French and British merchant marines, he wrote short stories and novels like Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent, which combined his experiences in remote places with an interest in moral conflict and the dark side of human nature. He died in England on August 3, 1924.

Herman Melville Short Stories

Illustrated by Penny Havard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, to Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill (Maria added the "e" to the family name following her husband's death in 1832). In the mid-1820s, young Herman fell ill to scarlet fever, and though he regained his health not long after, his vision was left permanently impaired by the illness. Melville's family had enjoyed a prosperous life for many years due to Allan Melvill's success as a high-end importer and merchant. However, when Allan made a failed attempt to branch into the fur trade in 1830, the family's fortune took a big hit. When Allan died suddenly soon after, in 1832, finances dwindled significantly.

Stephen Crane Short Stories

Illustrated by Penny Havard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

One of America's most influential realist writers, Stephen Crane, born in New Jersey on November 1, 1871, produced works that have been credited with establishing the foundations of modern American naturalism. His Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895) realistically depicts the psychological complexities of battlefield emotion and has become a literary classic. He is also known for authoring Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. He died at the age of 28 on June 5, 1900 in Germany.

Born on November 1, 1871, in Newark, New Jersey, Stephen Crane was the 14th and last child of writer/suffragist,Mary Helen Peck Crane and Reverend Jonathan Townley Crane, a Methodist Episcopal minister. Raised by his older sister Agnes, the young Crane attended preparatory school at Claverack College. He later spent less than two years overall as a college student at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and then at Syracuse University in upstate New York. He then moved to Paterson, New Jersey with one of his brothers and made frequent trips to nearby New York City, writing short pieces on what he experienced there.

O. Henry Short Stories

Illustrated by Penny Havard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825-88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833-65). William's parents had married on April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels; his favorite works were Lane's translation of One Thousand and One Nights, and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter's elementary school in 1876. He then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to tutor him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started working in his uncle's drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore, he also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk.

Leo Tolstoy Short Stories

Illustrated by Alan Phillips

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

On September 9, 1828, Leo Tolstoy was born in Tula Province, Russia. In the 1860s, he wrote his first great novel, War and Peace. In 1873, Tolstoy set to work on the second of his best known novels, Anna Karenina. He continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. One of his most successful later works was The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 in Astapovo, Russia.

On September 9, 1828, writer Leo Tolstoy was born at his family's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula Province of Russia. He was the youngest of four boys. In 1830, when Tolstoy's mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died, his father's cousin took over caring for the children. When their father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, died just seven years later, their aunt was appointed their legal guardian. When the aunt passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia. Although Tolstoy experienced a lot of loss at an early age, he would later idealize his childhood memories in his writing.

James Joyce, Dubliners

Illustrated by Lynn Pritchard

Frontispiece by Chris Simon

I wish I could stand up here and make some pretentious claim that this is the "greatest short story collection of all time!" or something along those lines but I generally don't read short stories or short story collections. But I like James Joyce and so figured what the heck, I made it through Ulysses, this should be a cakewalk. So I read it and if you were wowed by Ulysses then this should reconfirm Joyce's genius for you and that he could do other writing besides that wacky postmodern stuff (before there really was a postmodern). If you're not a Joyce fan most of these (other than a notable handful) probably won't convert you. In essence these are Joyce's portraits of the people of Dublin and the city itself, most of these stories are character sketches, mostly following a few people around as they go about their lives. They were written over a period of time so the quality does vary a bit, the first few stories I don't find anything special but by the time you get to around "Two Gallants" the quality takes a sharp spike upward and stays there right until the end. The prose is fairly easy to follow, the worst part is deciphering all the Irish names and slang that are used liberally for obvious reasons . . . if anything it showed me how two cultures who technically speak the language can sound so different. The stories run the gamut of the "slice of life" genre, if such a thing exists, showing people from all walks of life and all classes of society, showing them as realistically as Joyce could, all their fears and foibles, warts and all. At his best he makes you live the lives of the characters and immerses you deeply into the city of Dublin, probably more than any group of short stories has ever brought a city to life. If you're still not convinced, then take this advice, buy the book for the sake of only one story, the last story in the collection, "The Dead" . . . simply put it is one of the best pieces of short fiction I have ever read. It starts off mundanely enough at a party but by the time the characters leave the party and go back to their hotel the writing becomes something almost otherworldly and Joyce starts writing some of the most evocative prose ever put on paper. If the last few pages don't send chills down your spine, then you must be dead. That's the only explanation. After that gem, everything else is just icing on the cake. Simply put, everyone should read "The Dead" and if you're the type of person whose fancy shall be struck by the rest of the stories here, so much the better.