1001 Short Stories you must read before you die -- let's have 'em!

1001 Books contains hardly any short stories, while it does have a lot of huge novels that are intimidating to say the least.

I'm a sucker for short stories, so I'm wondering if the collective community can't come together and create a list of '1001 Short Stories you must read before you die.'
'Short story' here means any piece of fictional prose that is not a short play, and that is shorter than a novella (say, under 90 printed pages in a normal size paperback). So yes, that includes fairy tales and, say, the 16th-century Italian stories that formed the basis for many of Shakespeare's plays.

Off the top of my head, I can think of my personal top 3:
1. Raymond Carver, 'A Small, Good Thing'
2. Anton Chekhov, 'The Kiss'
3. Julio Cortazar, 'Carta a una senorita en Paris' ('Letter to a Young Lady in Paris')

Can you contribute the other 998?

cronopio

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

Two of my favorites from school days:
- The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry
- The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, by Mark Twain

Some great short stories I've read recently:

Fitzgerald, 'May Day'
Turgenev, 'Bezhin Prairie'
Beckett, 'Dante and the Lobster'
Forster, 'The Road to Colonus'

James Joyce, "The Dead"
Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno"
Plenty of stories by EA Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Ministers Black Veil", "Young Goodman Brown" (there are others I really like as well but it seems like not many people enjoy Hawthorne quite so much.)
Kafka, "The Metamorphosis", "A Hunger Artist", and "In the Penal Colony"
John Updike, "A&P", "Pigeon Feathers"
Arthur Machen "The White People", "Great God Pan"

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins

A Rose for Emily William Faulkner

Oh, I love this list. I'm always trying to fit in more short stories. I'll come back with my list later.

One that no one has mentioned yet is The Mark on the Wall by Virginia Woolf. I had to read it for my first ever university course, and I thought it was SO DUMB. I thought I hated Virginia Woolf because of it. Then a few years later, I was telling my husband how stupid it was, and I said "hold on, I'll just read it to you so you can see for yourself" (he was fixing something, so somewhat of a captive audience). As I read it, I realized that the story was actually quite cool, and the more I read the more I liked it. I've read it several times since and I like it better each time.

The Jolly Corner, The Beast in the Jungle or The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell
The Bet, by Anton Chekhov
The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allen Poe

Those are my three favorite short stories. The first two can be found online in their entirety.

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal isn't fiction; it's a satirical essay

This is getting to be a great list!

Some others:
Haircut, by Ring Lardner
Eyes of a Blue Dog, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
By His Bootstraps, by Robert Heinlein

I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but some of the SF short stories written in the US in the 40s and 50s are real classics.

The Troll, by TH White
The Destructors, by Graham Greene
A Tragedy in Green, by Ronald Firbank

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Why I Live at the PO by Eudora Welty

These are mostly mystery/crime or horror/ghost stories:

* Rear Window (It Had to Be Murder) by Cornell Woolrich
* Anything by M. R. James, especially The Mezzotint
* The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs
* The Lonesome Place by August Derleth
* Anything by Harlan Ellison
* Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl (for grownups)
* Anything by Algernon Blackwood, especially The Wendigo
* Anything by Richard Matheson, especially Nightmare at 20,000 Feet and Legion of Plotters
* Don't Look Now or The Blue Lenses by Daphne du Maurier
* Anything by Patricia Highsmith, especially The Snail-Watcher and The Terrapin
* The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin
* Where Angels Fear by Manly Wade Wellman

I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch....and the touchstones aren't working for several of these authors. *scream*

#8> I read "The Mark on the Wall" recently and to me it was more of an essay than a story. Still great, though.

As an aside, there is a series of books called 1001 Great Stories.

This is from the Amazon site for those who might be interested:

"Beginning in 2005, Messerli inaugurates a series of two volumes each season of 10 stories each and will continue these volumes until he reaches 1,001 tales."

Here are a few more:

I love The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield, and it is on the 1001 list as a "book," but my favourite Katherine Mansfield short story is How Pearl Button was Kidnapped.

I agree with the earlier suggestions of The Lottery--read that one many, many years ago in high school and the thought of it still gives me chills. I also agree with the suggestion of Bartleby, the Scrivener (Herman Melville. Oh, and Kafka's Metamorphosis is also a favourite of mine.

-- All Summer in a Day, by Ray Bradbury
-- The Cask of the Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe

Hmmm, sure I can think of some more . . .
--

"Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck. Nonfiction and short. This book is what actually got me interested in reading Steinbeck and have since read another one of his short stories "The Pearl". I also picked up Transgressions; a collection of novellas. The copy I got spotlighted Stephen King and John Farris. I picked it for the sole reason that I am a Stephen King collector. I ended up not liking the Stephen King short but I was completely enthralled with the John Farris story "The Ransome Women". I have since sought out John Farris only to find out most of his books are out of print, but I have found about 6 titles in second-hand stores. The entire Transgressions series in now in one hardback and is heavily discounted at bookstores. I picked up a copy for $3. I love new discoveries and what was interesting is that all of the Farris books I have picked up there is a quote from none other then Stephen King praising him either on the front on back of the book. Coincidental or planned?

I would definitely want to see Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes on a list of short stories, as well as The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.

Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway

There are a ton by Hemingway I'm crazy about, but this one kicked off my love affair with short stories. Trying to think of one I'd want to pick by P.G. Wodehouse too but there are so many.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

I'd also put something by H. P. Lovecraft on the list, but I'm not sure which one. The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Shadow out of Time are two of my favorites.

Hemingway! I'd have "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place".

"Araby" by J. Joyce
"The Body" by Stephan King
"The Story of an Hour" K. Chopin
"Paul's Case" by Willa Cather

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

I'd second that.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"

28> Good one... maybe "El Sur" and/or "The Library of Babel" by Borges also.

"Library of Babel" also crossed my mind, especially if featuring more than one story on the list. (Also "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius")

We're now at 75... keep 'em coming!

Some authors that are known for their short stories (but I don't have their books handy):
-Saki
-Tobias Wolff
-Russell Banks
-Nikolai Gogol

And let's not forget one of the shortest stories ever written:
Augusto Monterroso's 'The Dinosaur', which reads: 'When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.'

Oh, and I would like to propose two fairy tales:
Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid
Oscar Wilde, The Birthday of the Infanta

Gene Wolfe, "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," "Westwind," and many others
Connie Willis, "Fire Watch"
Flannery O'Connor, "Everything that Rises Must Converge" and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
Dorothy Parker, "Here We Are"
Ursula LeGuin, "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight" and "April in Paris"
George MacDonald, "The Golden Key"

I think Lorrie Moore should be here somewhere.

And another contemporary SS writer - Laurie Colwin.

And Alice Munro, but which story?

Anyone have a recommendation for these authors?

31 - Two good Gogol stories (besides The Nose which is already on the list) are The Overcoat and Old World Landowners

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is another great one, I remember reading it and seeing a play-adaptation of it when I was in middle school. Oh, and that reminds me, if they haven't been mentioned yet, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving are must-reads.

Pretty much anything by Chekhov (The Duel, in particular), Kafka (Metamorphosis) and Gogol (The Nose, The Squabble)

Second the Maupassant suggestion (The Necklace), but would also include Boule de Suif; an absolute classic.

Ooh, I love Boule de suif.

Anyway, #31, Hemingway has a great one shorter: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The Seven Cream Jugs by Saki is particularly nice as is Sredni Vashtar (I love that name so much - Sredni Vashtar!)

That Hemingway short story is pretty devastating.

Another great short short -
Richard Brautigan's The Scarlatti Tilt:

" 'It's very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who's learning to play the violin.' That's what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver."

Another one I like is The Ambush by Elizabeth Taylor. (Ahem... not the actress).

I've just thought of another that is a little gem; The Wall by Sartre; the tale of a prisoner on 'death row' that stuck with me for ages after I read it. Another great Maupassant story is A Parisian Affair (indeed, the entire collection in the Penguin edition is fantastic).

Ward 69 (the tale of a lunatic asylum) and Steppe (which is particularly poetic) are both excellent stories by Chekhov.
The Kreutzer Sonata and The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy are both superb too (indeed, I think both are on the 1001 list, if my memory serves me correctly, as they are both a little longer)

These Russians and French are masters of the genre!

Does Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl qualify as a short story?

I've been reading a lot of short stories by William Sansom lately.

My favorites are:
The Long Sheet
Various Temptations
Difficulty with a Bouquet
A Woman Seldom Found

My brother suggests
'War' by Jack London.

Because it's on its own in a book, I would qualify this as a novella.

"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver
"I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen
"How to Talk to Your Mother" by Lorrie Moore
Anything from The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Anything from Ideas of Heaven: a ring of stories by Joan Silber
"The Dead" by James Joyce

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

Since we're amassing quite a few stories, here's an idea that may appeal to some: Anthology Builder allows you to choose your (short) stories, and get them bound in a volume. Looks pretty new, but I'm sure the list of stories available will grow!

I haven't read anything by Stephen King for at least 15 years, but I used to love some of the stories from his anthology Night Shift. Some of my (creepy) favourites were:

- Graveyard Shift
- Grey Matter
- Battleground
- Trucks
- Quitters, Inc
- Sometimes They Come Back
- Lawnmower Man
- Children of the Corn

Several of these have been made into movies, but the original stories were better.

Nabokov's Dozen is an excellent collection of short stories, very worthy of a spot in the 1001 Short Stories List.

I Want to Live by Thom Jones
Facing the Music by Larry Brown

Three sci-fi ones:

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Phillip K Dick

and three others:

Pastoralia by George Saunders
Understanding the Ur-Bororo by Will Self (from The Quantity Theory of Insanity)
For only $9.99 plus tax by Etgar Keret (from Gaza Blues)

Does Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's count? Or is that a novella? Where do you draw the line?

There'll be more when I think of them!

#52 - While this does not clear up the distinction between novel and novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's is actually in 1001 Books.

All You Zombies— by Robert Heinlein

The most brilliant, convoluted and, surprisingly, shortest time travel story ever written.

-- M1001

'A Real Doll' by A.M. Homes and 'Outside The Law' by Kafka, There are two very different writers that I would also like to see included - John Collier and Mavis Gallant. I haven't been able to narrow it down to one story by each of them, anyone else?

Did anyone hear This American Life this past weekend? It featured Richard Bausch reading his story "Letter to the Lady of the House". I guarantee that if you go listen to it, you will think it story deserves to be on this list. I ordered his collected short stories right away - now if only he could read them all to me!

Here's the show:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=349

#17- I read "The Mark on the Wall" recently and to me it was more of an essay than a story. Still great, though.

---------------------

I see what you mean. However, I first read it in an anthology of short stories, and it's also included in The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, so it's widely considered a short story. I'm not sure if it is included in any of Woolf's collections of essays or not.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Rockinghorse Winner by D.H. Lawrence
Separating by John Updike
The Babysitter by Robert Coover
Cabal by Clive Barker (although, that's proably a novella)
Revelation by Flannery O'Connor
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe

I'd like to second:
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
The Destructors by Graham Greene

I have many favorite short stories, including many by Neil Gaiman. But the best short story ever in the universe is "Silver Water" by Amy Bloom, which can be found in her collection Come to Me.

How about short stories from
Jhumpa Lahiri} Interpreter of Maladies

and
roald dahllamb to the slaughter

Both are great short story books!

Oh I'd say the The Gambler by Dostoevsky but its.....116 pages!!!

"The Lady or the Tiger?" - Frank Stockton

We just read this at school today... and it's one of the most intriguing stories I've read. I'm surprised it hasn't been listed yet.

"The Lady or the Tiger?" is a classic. I don't think anyone in the US has gotten through school without reading it, as well as "The Most Dangerous Game." (I can't remember the author of the second, Kipling perhaps?) I also have very vivid memories of "In the Penal Colony." Now that I think about it, these all seem very dark, morbid even, to be given to junior high kids.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin is a good, but sad tale. It's very short.

What about William Trevor? He's among the very top short story writers living today?

Does anyone else love The Chrysanthemums? It was the first short story I ever read and one of the best, but I love anything by Steinbeck.

One Ordinary Day With Peanuts Shirley Jackson

Barn Burning by William Faulkner
The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

I'd completely second the nomination for the short story by Ursula K. Le Guin (>66)--but quick note--it's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" just in case you're trying to look it up.

Also, I'd add
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin--my favorite short story by far

and:
"Gimpel the Fool" by Isaac Beshivis Singer,
"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" by Kelly Link (or possibly one of her other stories instead),
"The School" by Donald Barthelme
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber

>71
Thanks. You'd think I could remember the name of the story. I'm obviously not a morning person.

I'm sure I could add a few more from Mark Twain like "The story of the Good Little Boy" or Ray Bradbury but "Master and Man" by Leo Tolstoy also comes more quickly to mind.

F. Scott Fitzgerald has a lot of short stories. Ones that come to mind are "the diamond as big as the ritz," "the last of the belles," and "bernice bobs her hair." Maugham has some great short stories too. And authors like Kjell Askildsen and Agnar Mykle are I believe translated into english and in my opinion true masters in the genre.

"This Shape We're In" by Jonathan Lethem. It's a bizarre blend of satire and sci-fi, history and magical realism. It's available as a standalone hardcover from McSweeney's or as part of the paperback edition of Men and Cartoons.

A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler is one of my all-time favorite collections.

Did anyone mentioned A Travel Piece by Margaret Atwood yet? I've probably read that one a half dozen times.

The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet and An Imperfect Conflagration and A Bottomless Grave, noth by Ambrose Bierce.

Anything by George Saunders, but specifically Pastoralia and Sea Oak (also in Pastoralia). Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (it was a short story in the New Yorker before it was a novel) by Junot Diaz is also amazing.

79 posts and no one has yet mentioned Riders of the Purple Wage by Philip Jose Farmer? What is wrong with you people??

I rate RotPW as one of the best, most iconic Sci Fi shorts; I also feel that it's meaty enough to hold sway on a general list such as this.

Any edition of the Harlan Ellison-edited collection Writers of the Future will turn up some amazing stuff. It doesn't get any better than brand-spanking-new, fresh, and original Sci Fi...

Some favorites that may not have been mentioned:

"Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton
"Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff" by Bret Harte
"The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde
"How Much Land Does a Man Need" Leo Tolstoy

How about Childhood's End (the short story, not the later novel) by Arthur C. Clarke? In fact, I think science fiction and mysteries (think Sherlock Holmes) are about the best formats for great short stories.

The Dubliners by James Joyce includes some wonderful stories.

Poe and de Maupassant and O. Henry wrote some of the best short fiction too. Oh, and The Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft, which I just reread.

ETA closing parenthesis.

Rain by W. Somerset Maugham and his complete short stories. He is a master of the form.

War Prayer by Mark Twain
Spring in Fialta by Vladimir Nabokov
Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathanial Hawthorne

anything that Poe ever wrote, really.

The Bear Came over the Mountain by Alice Munro

A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell is one of the best short stories I have ever read. This story was based on a true murder occuring in Iowa in 1900. It is difficult to find--usually in a book of short stories.

Pretty much any story by Neil Gaiman is fantastic (and deep!), but my favorites are The Wedding Present and Troll Bridge.

re #86 - also A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman. A cross between a Sherlock Holmes mystery, and H.P. Lovecraft creepiness.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce

masque of the red death by edger allen poe

"Where are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates and "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Just an FYI, here is a list of classic short stories online:

http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackboard/Common/Stories/1ListOfShortStories.htm...

-- M1001

Media, the short story site if wonderful! I have just read The Lost Phoebe by Theodore Dreiser. Also on the long list, a Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell, which can be difficult to find. Thank you for this unexpected gift.

Yeah it is a pretty impressive collection of short stories for an online site.

Glad you are enjoying it :).

-- M1001

Wow, I didn't check this thread for about six months, very glad to see it's still alive.
I am a bit baffled, though, that nobody mentioned JD Salinger yet. So my vote goes to 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'.

Pretty much anything from Rob Shearman's Tiny Deaths - my current absolute favourite short story collection.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

What a fabulous little thread - stuffed with gems!

Growing up in Britain, short stories didn't figure in my reading until a few years ago. Now that I've discovered them, I can't get enough of them!

In terms of keeping count, it looks like you've amassed about 200 so far which is great going.

A few more humble suggestions:

Quadraturin, In the Pupil and The Runaway Fingers by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Other authors which I think should make the cut:
Ali Smith - too many collections to choose from. She's a great short story writer.
Grace Paley - the stories involving "Faith" tend to my favourites, particularly the one in the park (Sorry, I dont have the book to hand!)
Machado de Assis - A Chapter of Hats
Isaac Babel
Janet Frame
Ben Marcus (although Age of Wire and String is very difficult to categorise)
Marquez (Chronicle of a Death Foretold and No One Writes to the Colonel)
Murakami - After the Quake
Orwell - A Hanging
Francis Wyndham

Will give it more thought and come up with specific examples for some of those.

Oh also, Junot Diaz's "Drown' is a great contemporary collection

Homeland and Other Stories by Barbara Kingsolver is an excellent collection of short stories.

I would plump for The Duel by Chekhov - brilliant writing.

Not technically a short story: considered a novel by the literary establishment, but by jove what a stonking good read!!!!!!

I recently read FS Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjaman Button before seeing the movie. I think it was the first time I ever read a book (or short story) in less time than it took me to watch the movie. The two are only similar in name and basic plot. Which one did I like more -- Fitzgerald's short story.

Hi Joel,

Welcome to LT!

Another story that is a lot shorter than the film is The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro which was adapted into Talk To Her, which was a very moving film

I have another:

The Face by Pinera

I read it about a week ago and I just can't stop thinking about it!

Funny, it was almost a month ago you suggested the Munro short and I just today copied the on-line version from the New Yorker but I have not read it. I do like Munro's haunting style. I never heard of Pinera.

Well, I hope you like it, Joel.

Incidentally, I read Munro's "The Beggar Maid, Stories of Flo and Rose" last year and I thought it was brilliant.

Virgilio Pinera was a Cuban writer and I found his short story in volume 1 of Messerli's 1001 great stories.

"The Dead" by James Joyce

"Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx

"The Star" by Arthur C. Clarke

"Bicentennial Man" by Isaac Asimov (Disclaimer: I read this many years ago and it may not be as worthy of inclusion as I remember, although it was certainly better than the film.)

Probably some more by Proulx and Joyce, some Kurt Vonnegut and maybe a little Irvine Welsh, but I can't recall the names of any right now

In a Glass Darkly by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

It's actually on the Boxall 1001 list; comprises a few short stories ~ horror genre. He was an Irishman and a contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe, popular in the mid-19th century. Eery & unsettling stuff!

I am in the middle of reading Nam Le's short stories in his collection, The Boat. I can't recommend them highly enough. They are really superb. They are turning out to be the best thing I've read so far this year and the most diverse and engaging stories I've read in a long time.