The New Penguin Book of American Short Stories, from Washington Irving to Lydia Davis

ISBN-13: 9780141194424 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 320 str.

Kasia Boddy

Opis

The short story is one of the most varied and exciting genres in American literature. This collection brings together many of its finest examples from the early nineteenth century to the present. It contains a richly diverse cast of characters, including convicts, artists, farm labourers, slaves, soldiers and salesmen, witches and ghosts, families and lovers. Their stories are told by some of America's most celebrated writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, and Raymond Carver) and a few, like Fanny Fern or Charles W. Chestnutt, who may be less familiar. The collection offers a stimulating combination of acknowledged classics, including Mark Twain's hilarious Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog and Edgar Allan Poe's chilling The Tell-Tale Heart, and some remarkable pieces that deserve a wider audience, such as Ernest Hemingway's story of miscommunication, Out of Season, or Lorrie Moore's tale of modern love and wit, Starving Again. Kasia Boddy's introduction traces the history of the American short story and explores the changes and continuities in its forms and preoccupations. This edition also contains a chronology, explanatory and biographical notes and suggestions for further reading.

O autorze

Kasia Boddy teaches in the English Department at University College London. She has published widely on American topics and her books include Boxing: A Cultural History (2008) and The American Short Story Since 1950 (2010). She has also co-edited several other anthologies, most recently, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer (2009) from Penguin Classics.