The January 2025 meeting scanned Short Story Collections and Anthologies. Collections by a single author ranged from some of the earliest fiction published in America—some classics of short fiction—to books published only four years ago. Anthologies gathering various authors ranged from very specific themes to broad commercial appeal.
Collections
 |
| The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon |
Irving, Washington. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Nos. I-VII. New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 1819-1820. Complete in seven parts, bound in one volume in contemporary three-quarter leather. This is a rare copy with all seven parts being first printings with the many uncorrected text points as noted in Bibliography of American Literature. The collection includes "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," among others, which influenced writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. These classics are the earliest works of American literature which are still read for pleasure. This series of tales brought Washington Irving instant fame and made him America's first international literary star. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon is listed in The Grolier Club's One Hundred Influential American Books Printed Before 1900.
 |
| First pages of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" |
 |
| Twice-Told Tales |
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Twice-Told Tales. Boston: American Stationers Co., John B. Russell, 1837. First edition of Hawthorne's second book and the first to bear his name on the title page, in the original publisher's cloth covered boards. These tales were collected from The Token, a literary gift book of the period; they are "twice-told" because they were previously published prior to this collection. It was Twice-Told Tales which launched Hawthorne's literary career. Hawthorne's tales were influenced by Puritanism in New England during that time and his interest in the supernatural. The tale "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" was praised by Edgar Allan Poe and others. Twice-Told Tales is listed in The Grolier Club's One Hundred Influential American Books Printed Before 1900.
 |
| Title page and Contents |
 |
| Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque |
Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840. The scarce first edition. Two volumes bound in the original publisher's muslin covered boards. This is the Walter Chrysler copy with his gilt-stamped leather bookplate. Poe's first book of tales includes the all-time classics, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ms. Found in Bottle," and "Ligeia." Poe's writings have influenced many authors down through the years and are still read by the general public and made into films.
 |
| Contents, Vol I. and Vol. II |
 |
| The Piazza Tales |
Melville, Herman. The Piazza Tales. New York: Dix & Edwards, 1856. First edition, bound in original publisher's cloth covered boards. The Piazza Tales is Melville's only collection of short stories. It contains six stories including "Bartleby," "Benito Cereno," and "The Encantadas," which are regarded as three of Melville's most important achievements in short fiction. The stories were all previously published in Putnam's Monthly from 1853 to 1855.
 |
| Title page and Contents |
 |
| The Suicide Club |
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Suicide Club. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896. The Suicide Club is a collection of three detective stories which combine to form a single narrative. The trilogy consists of "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts," "Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk," and "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab." The stories were first serialized from June through October 1878 in the London Magazine. They were collected into the first volume of New Arabian Nights in 1882. This 1896 fine edition is from Scribner's Ivory Series and is bound in cream cloth with elaborate green decorations, top edge gilt, and a deckled fore edge.
 |
| Contents |
 |
| The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. V |
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Volume V. New York: James L. Perkins & Co., 1906. Volume V of the ten volume set of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, a deluxe edition limited to 1,000 sets, contains five stories including "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and "The Bottle Imp." "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," one of Stevenson's most famous pieces, was first published in 1886. "The Bottle Imp" was concurrently published in British and American magazines in 1891 and first appeared in collected form in Island Nights' Entertainments in 1893. Stevenson wrote "The Bottle Imp" while in Samoa and had it translated into the native language for the missionary magazine O le sulu Samoa (The Samoan Torch) in 1891, thus it was published in Samoan before it appeared in English.
 |
| Contents |
 |
| A Diversity of Creatures |
Kipling, Rudyard. A Diversity of Creatures. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1917. First edition, rebound in three-quarter leather and red cloth with top edge gilt. Except for four novels, Kipling mostly wrote short stories and poems, publishing twenty-five short story collections during his lifetime. A Diversity of Creatures contains fourteen short stories and fourteen poems, each bearing a notation of the year of its original magazine publication, apart from two stories published here for the first time (as well as most of the poems).
 |
| The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy |
Davidson, Avram. The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy. Philadelphia: Owlswick Press. 1990. First edition. Doctor Eszterhazy is a scholarly detective character set in a fantasy European country imagined by Davidson. The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy is a collection of fourteen "historical mystery fantasy" novellas, novelettes, and short stories. These stories were all previously published in an earlier collection, The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy (1975), or various speculative fiction magazines. The collection was nominated for the 1992 Locus Poll Award for Best Collection and several of the stories were previously nominated for Nebula and Locus Poll awards for Best Novella, however none won in their respective nominating years. The collection contains all of the Doctor Eszterhazy stories with the exception of "The Odd Old Bird" published in 1988.
 |
| Poems and Stories and Tales from the Perilous Realm |
Tolkien, J. R. R. Poems and Stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. First edition.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Illustrated by Alan Lee. First published in 1997.
Two collections of Tolkien’s shorter works both containing: "Farmer Giles of Ham," "Leaf By Niggle," "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" (poems), "Smith of Wootton Major," and the essay "On Fairy Stories." Poems and Stories also contains "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son," a dramatic poem set after The Battle of Maldon in 991 during the reign of Æthelred II, while Tales from the Perilous Realm contains "Roverandam," a children’s story. Tolkien's works contained in these two volumes were all previously published but gathered for the first time in Poems and Stories in 1994 and Tales from the Perilous Realm in 1997.
 |
| And Go Like This |
Crowley, John. And Go Like This: Stories. Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2019. First edition. This collection of Crowley's short stories includes twelve previously published stories plus the unpublished "Anosognosia" written in 2019. It includes his 2018 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Short Story winner “Spring Break” (originally published in New Haven Noir). This collection of thirteen stories gathers all of Crowley's short fiction written from 2002 to 2019.
 |
| Afterparties |
So, Anthony Veasna. Afterparties: Stories. New York: Ecco Press, 2021. First edition. Afterparties is a collection of short stories exploring the lives of immigrant and first-generation Cambodian Americans living in Northern California. Its characters include survivors of the Cambodian Genocide and their American children and the impacts of intergenerational trauma in immigrant communities. Several stories also examine queerness and LGBTQ identity within Cambodian American culture. Afterparties won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize for Best First Book and the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ fiction. The story "Superking Son Scores Again" won the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction. Anthony So was an emerging young writer; all the stories in this collection except one were previously published in literary journals and magazines. Afterparties was his debut book, though he did not live to see its publication; he died several months after Ecco Press won the rights to publish his book, and before it was released.
Anthologies
 |
| Missing from their Homes |
Bates, H. E., et al. Missing From Their Homes: Short Stories on the Familiar Broadcasts for Missing Persons. London: Hutchinson & Co., n.d. [1936]. First edition. The title and theme of this anthology was inspired by the SOS announcements which often preceded BBC broadcasts, where alerts for missing persons were issued prior to regular BBC programming. The compiler of this anthology is unknown, and the publication is undated, though the publisher's current catalog inserted at the back of the book is dated Summer 1936. No copyright credits or permissions for reprinting these stories are provided. The anthology includes well-known British writers such as H. E. Bates, Graham Greene, Anthony Berkeley [Cox], Phyllis Bentley, and L. A. G. Strong. The selected stories include tales of missing persons, kidnappings, and abductions, though it is not exclusively a crime fiction anthology. Several of the stories have never been reprinted, and several of the stories are written in a dark or suspenseful style that is out-of-character for their respective author (such as E. M. Delafield, a humorous writer). These characteristics of the book make it highly desirable but difficult to find.
 |
| Title page and Contents |
 |
| Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense |
Hitchcock, Alfred, ed. Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947. First edition. Edited and with Introductory Notes by Mr. Hitchcock. This anthology contains 27 short stories and novelettes which Hitchcock selected for their element of suspense. Hitchcock writes, "It seems to me that suspense is a significant element in every story—else what we are dealing with is not a story at all… Suspense is the plot device which makes storytelling an art." For the stories selected here, Hitchcock focused on suspense accompanied by danger, a quality of suspense which has always intrigued him. The selected stories are penned by such American and English writers as Stephen Vincent Benet, Lord Dunsany, James M. Cain, Margery Sharp, John Dickson Carr, A. D. Divine, and Graham Greene. This title is one of several anthologies of suspense stories published in the 1940s and credited to Hitchcock. It is the first of his anthologies to be published in hardback and the first to bear his name in the title (the previous books contained only his introduction). First edition copies of this title in a dust jacket, in any condition, are difficult to locate and, when found, generally command a high price.
 |
| Table of Contents |
Humorously, at the beginning of Hitchcock's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train, the lead character, Guy Haines (played by Farley Granger), is reading a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense when he is first approached by the psychopath Bruno Anthony (played by Robert Walker).
 |
| After the King |
Greenberg, Martin H., ed. After the King: Stories in Honor of J. R. R. Tolkien. New York: Tor Books, 1992. This anthology is a gathering of nineteen new fantasy and science fiction stories written to celebrate the centennial of Tolkien's birth. The stories are not set in, or directly related to, Tolkien's legendarium, but seek to capture the spirit and originality of Tolkien's work. Contributors include Stephen R. Donaldson, Terry Pratchett, Poul and Karen Anderson, Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. After the King includes an introduction by Jane Yolen on Tolkien's role in the fantasy genre.
 |
| Travelman Short Story Collection |
Mansfield, Katherine, et al. Travelman Short Story Collection. Set no. 1: Special Edition. London: Travelman Publishing, 1998. The Travelman Short Story Editions box set is an anthology of 34 stories by 24 writers in 24 individual issues, in a variety of fiction genres, representing some of the classics of short fiction. The set includes such works as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" (Suspense), D. H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner" (Classics), H. G. Wells's "The Country of the Blind" (Science Fiction), and Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band" (Crime). The "short stories that fold like a map" are printed on large 15" x 21" sheets of durable paper stock and arranged into 24 panels. The paper can be unfolded lengthwise and read in four-panel sections like turning the pages of a book. The stories were available in a box set, though only a small quantity was issued. Most readers were subscribers to the series, who received each issue in the mail in a specially designed envelope. A total of 36 issues were released, but the novelty publishing endeavor did not survive the year it originated, and the planned second box set was never released. While most of the individual titles are still easy to find, the special edition box set No. 1 is scarce, if not rare.
 |
| 24 issues contained in box set No. 1 |
