Our Collection | The Short Story Project

France

“I had loved her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one’s mind, only one desire...

Was It a Dream?

Guy de Maupassant

7 min

France

Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything they could get. As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession...

Two Friends

Guy de Maupassant

8 min

USA

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, In Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment...

The Ransom of Red Chief

O. Henry

16 min

USA

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio. Seneca. At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18–, I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company with my friend...

The Purloined Letter

Edgar Allan Poe

28 min

Russia

“To whom shall I tell my grief?” The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer...

Misery

Anton Chekhov

8 min

USA

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled...

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Ambrose Bierce

11 min

Germany

NATHANIEL TO LOTHAIRE. Certainly you must all be uneasy that I have not written for so long—so very long. My mother, I am sure, is angry, and Clara will believe that I am passing my time...

The Sandman

E.T.A. Hoffmann

69 min

Russia

Poverty Brothers, what is the most fashionable word these days, eh? These days the most fashionable word around is, of course, “electrification”. I don’t deny the vast importance of shining a light on Soviet Russia....

Poverty | The Galosh

Mikhail Zoshchenko

6 min

Czech Republic

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might...

On the Tram

Franz Kafka

1 min

Italy

Shaken by his wife with an angry tug on the arm, jolted out of his sleep again that night, was poor Mister Anselmo. “You’re laughing!” Dazed, and with his nose still stuffy from sleep, and wheezing...

You’re Laughing

Luigi Pirandello

9 min

USA

‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’t start drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be...

An Alcoholic Case

F. Scott Fitzgerald

9 min

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

USA

The Paradise of Bachelors It lies not far from Temple-Bar. Going to it, by the usual way, is like stealing from a heated plain into some cool, deep glen, shady among harboring hills. Sick with...

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

Herman Melville

32 min

Russia

A Fantastic Story Chapter I I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before....

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34 min

USA

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be...

The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

24 min

Ireland

For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick. It is a melancholy object to those, who walk...

A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift

10 min

UK

Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one...

The Mark on the Wall

Virginia Woolf

12 min

Russia

Night. Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: “Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, While I sing a song for thee.” A little...

Sleepy

Anton Chekhov

9 min

India

The postmaster first took up his duties in the village of Ulapur. Though the village was a small one, there was an indigo factory near by, and the proprietor, an Englishman, had managed to get a post office...

The Postmaster

Rabindranath Tagore

8 min

Lebanon|USA

Part One Miserable is the man who loves a woman and takes her for a wife, pouring at her feet the sweat of his skin and the blood of his body and the life of...

Madame Rose Hanie

Gibran Khalil Gibran

13 min

UK

It was the middle of November when we arrived at Martingdale, and found the place anything but romantic or pleasant. The walks were wet and sodden, the trees were leafless, there were no flowers save a...

A Strange Christmas Game

Charlotte Riddell

7 min

Japan

It was a chilly evening. A servant of a samurai stood under the Rashōmon, waiting for a break in the rain. No one else was under the wide gate. On the thick column, its crimson lacquer...

Rashōmon

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

8 min

USA

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until...

The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry

8 min

Russia

Ilya Ilych was injured. It happened in the evening, in the third act. Dressed in braided crimson livery, white stockings and shoes with buckles, Ilya Ilych was to go out on stage to hand the ballerinas...

The Extra

Anatoly Kuznetsov

34 min

UK

“Good-bye, darling.” “Good-bye, sweetheart.” Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village. Presently he turned a...

Philomel Cottage

Agatha Christie

31 min