Category: Short Stories

A collection of classic short stories for study, copywork, model-based writing, narration, dictation, and just plain fun.

Eveline by James Joyce

Eveline: This short story by James Joyce is from Dubliners, Joyce’s 1914 collection of short stories. Eveline She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window...

The Other Side of the Hedge

In “The Other Side of the Hedge,” English author E. M. Forster seems to take a critical look at the modern quest to make progress without bothering to experience life. The Other Side of...

Cinderella

Cinderella OR A Little Glass Slipper This rags-to-riches folk tale of unjust oppression and triumphant reward features Cinderella, a young woman living in difficult circumstances. Through the intervention of a fairy godmother, she is...

Eudora Welty’s home in Jackson, Mississippi is now a museum open to visitors.

A Worn Path by Eudora Welty

A Worn Path by Eudora Welty It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied red rag, coming...

Echo and Narcissus

Echo and Narcissus by Ovid

Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Roman mythological epic from the Augustan Age. In this brief story, the mountain nymph Echo falls in love with Narcissus, a beautiful hunter from...

A Curious Pleasure Excursion by Mark Twain

“A Curious Pleasure Excursion” by Mark Twain was published at the time of the “Comet Scare” in the summer of 1847. A New York Times article on the subject reassures readers that there is...

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Ask a humorist to write his autobiography, and you just might end up with a short story such as Mark Twain’s Burlesque Autobiography. This short story is entirely fictional, and is not intended to...

In the Year 2889 by Jules Verne

In the Year 2889 By Jules Verne Edited by Blake Linton Editor’s Notes by Blake Linton In 1885, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald (the same man who sent Stanley...