Over 2000 classic short stories

February 17, 2008 9:32 AM

Over 2000 classic short stories from American Literature as well as an option to sign up for a short story of the day rss feed. Among the authors on offer are Kate Chopin, Saki, O. Henry, Louisa May Alcott, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack London, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens, Herman Hesse, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Honoré de Balzac, Edith Warton, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, Langston Hughes, Leo Tolstoy, Aldous Huxley, Roald Dahl, Henry James, Katherine Mansfield and I could keep going for a while. The point is, there's over 2000 short stories in there.
posted by Kattullus (31 comments total)

Neat!

Roald Dahl's short stories for adults are fiercely underrated. They're subtle and creepy - several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes. Good stuff!
posted by Miko at 9:40 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Kattullus: shoots, scores.
posted by not_on_display at 9:41 AM on February 17, 2008

cool beans! thanks kattullus!
posted by chara at 9:44 AM on February 17, 2008

I'm not sure all those people are American.

That said, they may be worth reading despite their foreignness. Thanks for the link, Kattullus.
posted by ibmcginty at 9:47 AM on February 17, 2008

Ohh... the site bills itself as "American Literature." Well, ok, I'll allow it.
posted by ibmcginty at 9:48 AM on February 17, 2008

isn't the internet american?
posted by billybobtoo at 9:49 AM on February 17, 2008

Mexicans and Panamanians consider themselves to be American.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:58 AM on February 17, 2008

>>several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes.

Also 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' and Dahl's own 'Tales of the Unexpected', which ran on ABC (iirc)from '79-'80.

So many great writers here, but Miko, you're right: His stories are underrated.

Sweet post, Kattullus!
posted by SaintCynr at 10:14 AM on February 17, 2008

This is a subset of Project Gutenberg, without attribution, and with ads. Fail.
posted by 3.2.3 at 10:31 AM on February 17, 2008

Terrific! And let me say that I as an American am proud as can be of Dickens, Kafka, and Tolstoy. U S A!!
posted by languagehat at 10:46 AM on February 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

I, for one, welcome our Gutenberg scrapping American Author overlords from France, England and Russia.
posted by stbalbach at 11:15 AM on February 17, 2008

Less proud of Hermann Hesse, but that's just me.

And is Orwell's Shooting an Elephant not an essay? Has anyone proven it to have been made up?
posted by IndigoJones at 11:20 AM on February 17, 2008

Love the rss feed. Thanks!
posted by misha at 11:23 AM on February 17, 2008

I'd just like to note, Gutenberg-scraping aside, that Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is one of the best short stories I've read. I was pleasantly surprised at a bunch of her stories, actually, when I picked up a collection last year - for instance, at "The Storm," a scandalous follow-up to "At the 'Cadian Ball." It's not often in the 1800s you see a serious story about the healing power of adulterous sex.
posted by mediareport at 11:31 AM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Some great stories here. Thanks for sharing the link!
posted by kamikazegopher at 12:28 PM on February 17, 2008

This link, combined with my printer and a case of fiddich would allow me to brick up my room's door and get into some serious plugging of holes in my reading list. And then some. For this I thank you.
posted by Busithoth at 12:32 PM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

several were turned into 'Twilight Zone' episodes. Good stuff!
posted by Miko at 9:40 AM on February 17 [+] [!]

Any idea which episodes Miko?
posted by timsteil at 12:47 PM on February 17, 2008

These are great. Thanks!
posted by eye of newt at 1:00 PM on February 17, 2008

Any idea which episodes?

"Man from the South" is the famous one - Peter Lorre and a young Steve McQueen negotiating the essential Dahlian grisly twist. "Lamb to the Slaughter," "The Landlady," "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat," "Poison," and "Dip in the Pool" were the other ones.
posted by Iridic at 1:14 PM on February 17, 2008 [2 favorites]

Oh, excuse me - those were Dahl's Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. Dahl never actually provided any scripts for the Twilight Zone; perhaps Miko was thinking of Way Out, a 1961 Zone rival that Dahl hosted himself.

Since I've already cannibalized my planned Dahl post...

Some episodes of Way Out, With Roald Dahl:
Dissolve to Black
William & Mary
I Heard You Calling Me
The Croaker
Death Wish

Dahl biographer Jeremy Treglown's article about the adult fiction.

And I should be remiss at this point if I didn't mention that Metafilter's own web-goddess is also a Roald Dahl Information Goddess.
posted by Iridic at 1:39 PM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Doyle? I expected American-born Brian Doyle, the award winning editor of Portland, the magazine of the University of Portland. But is seems the Doyle listed is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of Brian's many writer-type relatives, but not American.
posted by Cranberry at 1:41 PM on February 17, 2008

This thread kind of feels like a Twilight Zone episode:

Alien 1: Hey there's a web site with a bunch of stories you can read for FREE. With ads.

Alien 2: Wow, that's the coolest thing since Twitter!

Alien 1: Yeah, the design is ugly but I can just print them all out and then the ads will be less distracting.

Astronaut: Why don't you just take some books out of the library?

Aliens: What's a library?

Astronaut: Noooooooo!!!!!!!

Fade to black.
posted by gwint at 2:36 PM on February 17, 2008 [3 favorites]

Some of the transcription is questionable. For instance, the closing line of one of the Lovecraft short stories is written as:

The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been a MAN!!!

Somehow I doubt the exclamation points capture authorial intent.
posted by voltairemodern at 3:19 PM on February 17, 2008

perhaps Miko was thinking of Way Out, a 1961 Zone rival that Dahl hosted himself

I've definitely conflated all these things, and am thankful to those whose knowledge is far sharper than my dim fuzzy memory!
posted by Miko at 4:01 PM on February 17, 2008 [1 favorite]

Needs more Shirley Jackson. But, this is excellent.
posted by BoringPostcards at 4:39 PM on February 17, 2008

they may be worth reading despite their foreignness

Funny, I had the exact opposite thought.
posted by omegar at 8:13 PM on February 17, 2008

Mexicans and Panamanians consider themselves to be American.

Really? I thought we hated you for your freedom.
posted by omegar at 8:18 PM on February 17, 2008

Kattulus: It's "Edith Wharton" - Might want to correct the tag. Thanks for the link!
posted by syzygy at 5:39 AM on February 18, 2008

So it is! Thank you, syzygy.
posted by Kattullus at 5:58 AM on February 18, 2008

BIG BIG omission... why name Huxley if you can't name Asimov? Bread and butter here...
posted by 80onelove at 9:41 PM on February 20, 2008

That's weird. I could've sworn there were a couple of Huxley stories on there. I'll remove Huxley from the tag list.
posted by Kattullus at 9:55 PM on February 20, 2008