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50 Greatest Short Stories of All Time

In My Opinion

By Annie KapurPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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For as long as writing has been around, short stories have been around as well. A Short Story is mostly defined as a story that has all the themes, characters and plots that would be considered for a novel but, it just does not have the length of one. Most people consider it to be around 1'600 to 20'000 words in length and so, it is much short than what a novel would be considered to be.

Short Stories have as much power as novels and, in some aspects, a lot of people prefer reading short stories to novels for a number of reasons. The first reason is probably the most simplistic: because they are shorter. The working person may find it difficult to keep on track when reading a novel and the satisfaction of finishing a piece of writing may be long and tiresome, so reading short stories makes sense. In one night, one could read one entire short story instead of having to remember plot, characters and themes on top of everything else in their lives.

The second reason is that short story anthologies provide more range of reading than simply reading a novel. I'm not saying that I find short stories better than novels, but from what I've heard, some people prefer short stories because of the anthologies offering many differences in character and theme.

The third reason is that short stories can offer difference for some of us reading novels constantly. For me, I believe that novels are the best thing ever, but when I want something different to read - I turn to the short story and no matter the theme, I like to see what the genre has to offer. I can always read more short stories and in 2020, I seek to do just that.

Be that as it may, I have already read many and so, here are my top 50 short stories to this day...

50-41

Nabokov

50. "Signs and Symbols" by Vladimir Nabokov

49. "Three Questions" by Leo Tolstoy

48. "The South' by Jorge Luis Borges

47. "Alan Bean Plus Four" by Tom Hanks

46. "Araby" by James Joyce

45. "A Village After Dark" by Kazuo Ishiguro

44. "Spring in Fialta" by Vladimir Nabokov

43. "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain

42. "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

41. "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor" by JD Salinger

40-31

McCullers

40. "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

39. "Wunderkind" by Carson McCullers

38. "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood

37. "Big Two-Hearted River" by Ernest Hemingway

36. "A Good Man is Hard" to Find by Flannery O' Connor

35. "The Company of Wolves" by Angela Carter

34. "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde

33. "The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter

32. "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

31. "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud" by Carson McCullers

30-21

Du Maurier

30. "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka

29. "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol

28. "The Birds" by Daphne Du Maurier

27. "Going to Meet the Man" by James Baldwin

26. "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant

25. "The Second Bakery Attack" by Haruki Murakami

24. "Brokeback Mountain" by E. Annie Proulx

23. "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges

22. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

21. "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

20-11

Chopin

20. "To Build a Fire" by Jack London

19. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

18. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by EA Poe

17. "In the Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka

16. "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry

15. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

14. "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin

13. "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges

12. "Children of the Corn" by Stephen King

11. "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

10-1

10. "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

9. "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov

8. "Cat in the Rain" by Ernest Hemingway

7. "A Diamond as Big as the Ritz" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

6. "The Monkey's Paw" by WW Jacobs

5. "The Cask of Amontillado" by EA Poe

4. "The Rats in the Walls" by HP Lovecraft

3. "Sardonicus" by Ray Russell

2. "Perchance to Dream" by Charles Beaumont

1. "The Shadow in the Corner" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

literature
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About the Creator

Annie Kapur

190K+ Reads on Vocal.

English Lecturer

🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)

🎓Film & Writing (M.A)

🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd)

📍Birmingham, UK

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