50 Greatest Short Stories of All Time
In My Opinion
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
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
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
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
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
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
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.