Fifty Great Short Stories (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Milton Crane (Editor)
Key Phrases: duh guy, The Misfit, Miss Spence, Under Secretary (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

50 Great Short Stories is a comprehensive selection from the world’s finest short fiction. The authors
represented range from Hawthorne, Maupassant, and Poe, through Henry James, Conrad, Aldous Huxley, and James Joyce, to Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Faulkner, E.B. White, Saroyan, and O’Connor. The variety in style and subject is enormous, but all these stories have one point in common–the enduring quality of the writing, which places them among the masterpieces of the world’s fiction.

About the Author

Milton Crane is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at George Washington University and the University of Chicago. His is the author several books and articles on English literature, as well as the editor of the Bantam anthology, 50 Great American Short Stories.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Classics (August 1, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553277456
• ISBN-13: 978-0553277456
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,826 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Five stars only because there's no six-star rating, April 30, 2001

By	Bruce Dunlavy (Bowling Green, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This is the best collection of the best stories ever written in America. It covers 200 years of fiction including undeniable classics such as "Young Goodman Brown," "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and "Soldiers of the Republic," and relatively unknown masterpieces such as "A Dead Issue," by Charles Macomb Flandrau, and "The Meeting Place," by Oliver LaFarge. Writers represented include the well-known and widely-honered (Washington Irving, Jack London, John Steinbeck) and the less-celebrated (Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Robert M. Coates, Seymour Friedgood). Everyone, no matter his or her taste, will find twenty or more of these stories to be among the best they have ever read. Finally, the reader may discover within this volume the doorway to a writer, new to him or her, whose work becomes a lifelong passion.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Real Gem, August 24, 2005

By	EPerry (Toronto) - See all my reviews

I carry my little book everywhere, and when I'm bored, or waiting, or am in need of a bit of wisdom, my book is right there in my purse! It allows me to read great authors at any time...and the stories are usually only four or five pages long! Love it! Joyce, Chekhov, Steinbeck, Poushkin, Hemingway....all there. How can you go wrong....reading these great authors for such a small price.

I recommend it highly; then the next time you stop for a coffee, you can get a reading "fix" at the same time. Doesn't matter if you've read the stories before, as a good writer allows you to see something new each time you read it.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Little Mix Up, January 26, 2006

By	Eugene N. Kilmer (Los Alamos, New Mexico United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The ISBN number for this book is actually for a book with the same title and by the same author, but a book having different stories in it. If you take look inside this book, you'll see right away that the cover presented to you looks different. Further investigation reveals that the stories inside the book are not those mentioned by the other reviewers. In short, if you're looking for Milton Crane's "50 Great Stories", ISBN 0553277456, this is not it.