The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, edited by A. S. Byatt, who has published several collections of short stories, is the first anthology to take the English short story as its theme. The thirty-seven stories featured here are selected from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, byauthors ranging from Dickens, Trollope, and Hardy to J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan, though many draw ingeniously from the richness of earlier English literary writing. There are all sorts of threads of connection and contrast running through these stories. Their subjects vary from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the momentous to the trivial, from the grim to the farcical. There is English empiricism, English pragmatism, English starkness, English humour,English satire, English dandyism, English horror, and English whimsy. There are examples of social realism, from rural poverty to blitzed London; ghost stories and tales of the supernatural; surreal fantasy and science fiction. There are stories of sensibility, precisely delineated, from Hardy'sreluctant bride to the shocked heroine of Elizabeth Taylor's The Blush, from H. E. Bates's brilliant fusion of class, sex, death, and landscape, to D. H. Lawrence's exploration of a consciousness slowly detaching itself from its world. There are exuberant stories by Saki and Waugh, Wodehouse andFirbank, with a particularly English range from high irony to pure orchestrated farce. The very range and scope of the collection celebrates the eccentric differences and excellences of English short stories Some of A. S. Byatt's choices clearly take their place in the grand tradition of story-telling, while others are more unusual.Many break all the rules of unity of tone andnarrative, appearing to be one kind of story before unexpectedly turning into another. They pack together comedy and tragedy, farce and delicacy, elegance and the grotesque, with language as various as the subject-matter. As A. S. Byatt explains: 'My only criterion was that those stories I selectedshould be startling and satisfying, and if possible make the hairs on the neck prickle with excitement, aesthetic or narrative.'

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

Glenda Abramson's informative introduction sets the scene for a powerful literary collection, the definitive anthology of a vibrant modern genre.

Ireland has always been a nation of story-tellers. This magnificent anthology chronicles the development of a rich literary tradition, from the earliest folk-tales to James Joyce, Liam O'Flaherty, and the rising stars of the new generation.

Joyce Carol Oates has performed a full review of her acclaimed 1992 anthology, The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, and in this second edition embraces those authors who have come to define turn-of-the-century American literature. Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace are just a few of the authors whose stories are now represented. Each story is accompanied by a brief introduction, and there is also a fascinating introductory essay by Joyce Carol Oates that explains why these stories form the foundation of the American literary canon, and the trends and innovations that have taken place in the last twenty years.

Provides a clear introduction to the key terms and frameworks in cognitive poetics and stylistics

A.S. Byatt has always alternated novels with shorter fiction. Different literary and linguistic models are applied here to analyse how she guides her readers' understanding of vital, complex issues within her perennial themes of life, creativity and death. This study focuses on certain stories from the six volumes of short fiction she has produced to date. The two novellas of Angels and Insects are scrutinised for their intertextuality, while stories from Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice and Little Black Book of Stories are novel discussions of creativity and related gender issues.