This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Language | English |
---|---|
Series | The Best American Short Stories |
The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.
The series began in 1915, when Edward O'Brien edited his selection of the previous year's stories. This first edition was serialized in a magazine; however, it caught the attention of the publishing company Small, Maynard & Company, which published subsequent editions until 1926, when the title was transferred to Dodd, Mead and Company.
The time appeared to be a propitious one for such a collection. The most popular magazines of the day featured short fiction prominently and frequently; the best authors were well-known and well-paid. More importantly, there was a nascent movement toward higher standards and greater experimentation among certain American writers. O'Brien capitalized on this moment. He was deeply and vocally skeptical of the value of commercial short fiction, which tended to the formulaic and sentimental; he insisted, in introduction after introduction, on the need for a consciously literary development of the short story. He used his selections to reinforce this call. Over the years of his editorship, he drew attention to two generations of American authors, from Sherwood Anderson and Edna Ferber to Richard Wright and Irwin Shaw. Perhaps the most significant instance of O'Brien's instincts involves Ernest Hemingway; O'Brien anthologized that author's "My Old Man" when it had not even been published yet, and was, moreover, instrumental in finding an American publisher for In Our Time . (He also dedicated the 1923 edition to the young author, while misspelling his name “Hemenway.”) O'Brien was known to work indefatigably: he claimed to read around 8,000 stories a year, and his editions contained lengthy tabulations of stories and magazines, ranked on a scale of three stars (representing O'Brien's notion of their "literary permanence").
Though the series attained a degree of fame and popularity, it was never universally accepted. Fans of the period's popular fiction often found his selections precious or willfully obscure. On the other hand, many critics who accepted "literary" fiction objected to O'Brien's occasionally strident and pedantic tone. After his death, for instance, The New Yorker compared him to the recently deceased editor of the Social Register , suggesting that they shared a form of snobbery.
O'Brien died of a heart attack in London in 1941. He was replaced as editor of the series by Martha Foley, founder and former editor of Story magazine. O'Brien, who had once called Story one of the most important events in literary history since the publication of Lyrical Ballads , presumably would have approved the choice. Foley edited the publication, at first alone and then with the assistance of her son, David Burnett, until 1977. These years witnessed both the ascendancy and eclipse of the type of short story favored by O'Brien: writers as diverse as John Cheever, Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tillie Olsen offered sharply observed, generally realistic stories that eschewed trite conventions. At the same time, Foley evinced some degree of awareness of the new currents in fiction. Donald Barthelme, for instance, was chosen for The School in 1976. Foley also attended to the rise of so-called minority literature, dedicating the 1975 volume to Leslie Marmon Silko, although it has been argued that the series was less perceptive in this area than it might have been.
After Foley's death, the publisher—by that time, Houghton Mifflin—elected to take the series in a new direction. Under the guidance of a series editor (Shannon Ravenel 1978–1990, Katrina Kenison 1991–2006, Heidi Pitlor 2007– ), a different writer of reputation would select the contents and introduce the volume each year. The editor would choose the best twenty stories from 120 stories recommended by the series editor. This format has been followed since, although the guest editor has occasionally gone beyond what the series editor recommended (e.g., John Gardner in 1982).
In 2002, Houghton-Mifflin made the series part of its broader Best American series .
In 2000, John Updike selected 22 unabridged stories from the first 84 annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories, and the result is The Best American Short Stories of the Century. The expanded CD audio edition includes a new story from The Best American Short Stories 1999 to round out the century. In 2015, Lorrie Moore served as the guest editor for a centennial anthology from the series, 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories.
Edward Joseph Harrington O'Brien (1890–1941) was a U.S. writer, poet, editor and anthologist.
The Best American Series is a series of anthologies that is published annually by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Each title within the series covers a specific genre such as short stories or mysteries. The works for each year's edition are selected from those published elsewhere during the previous year.
Percy Addleshaw was an English barrister and writer.
Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.
Transatlantic Review was a literary journal founded in 1959 by Joseph F. McCrindle, who remained its editor until he closed the magazine in 1977. Published quarterly, at first in Rome and then in London and New York, TR was known for its eclectic mix of short stories and poetry—by both young, previously unpublished writers and prominent authors such as Samuel Beckett, Iris Murdoch, Grace Paley and John Updike—as well as drawings, essays, and interviews with writers and theater and film directors.
Akhil Sharma is an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award.
Harvard Review is a biannual literary journal published by Houghton Library at Harvard University.
The Best American Short Stories 2007, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Heidi Pitlor and by guest editor Stephen King.
Robert Lacy is an American writer whose short stories and essays have been published in a large number of publications including The Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, The Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Gettysburg Review. He has also published several books of fiction and essays.
The Best American Short Stories 2006, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Katrina Kenison and by guest editor Ann Patchett. This edition is notable in that it was the last edition edited by Katrina Kenison, who was succeeded by Heidi Pitlor the following year. Also, Patchett chose to present the stories in reverse-alphabetical order.
The Best American Short Stories 2004, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Katrina Kenison and by guest editor Lorrie Moore.
The Best American Short Stories 2003, a volume in The Best American Short Stories series, was edited by Katrina Kennison and by guest editor Walter Mosley.
The Best American Mystery and Suspense is an annual anthology of North American mystery and thriller stories. Prior to 2021, its title was The Best American Mystery Stories and it was published by Houghton Mifflin through the year 2017. It has been part of The Best American Series since 1997, it is published by Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.
Richard Burgin was an American fiction writer, editor, composer, critic, and academic. He published nineteen books, and from 1996 through 2013 was a professor of Communications and English at Saint Louis University. He was also the founder and publisher of the internationally distributed award-winning literary magazine Boulevard.
Carol Sklenicka is an American biographer and literary scholar known for her authoritative, full-scale biographies of two important figures in late twentieth-century American literature: acclaimed short story masters Raymond Carver and Alice Adams.
Larry Dark has been the director of The Story Prize—a U.S. book award for short story collections—since its inception in 2004. He served as series editor of the O. Henry Awards for the 1997–2002 volumes. He has also compiled, edited, and introduced four other literary anthologies.
Katrina Kenison is an American author of literary memoir and nonfiction about parenting, life stages, mindfulness, and simplicity. Her first book, Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, published in 2000, encourages parents of young children to restore balance and stillness to lives often spent on the run. "Inspirational and life-affirming, it offers reminders of what is of lasting value, such as grace, love, tranquility." In 2009, Kenison published The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir, an exploration of the challenges and rewards of parenting adolescents. Her memoir Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment, published in January 2013, is a personal account of the losses and lessons of the second half of life. Kenison is also the author, with Rolf Gates, of Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga. A graduate of Smith College, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Steven Lewers, and is the mother of two grown sons. She is a yoga instructor and a Reiki practitioner.
"Absolution" is a short story by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was included in his 1926 collection All the Sad Young Men.
Mary Ward Brown was an American short story writer and memoirist. Her works largely feature Alabama as a setting and have received several awards.
Shannon Ravenel, née Harriett Shannon Ravenel, is an American literary editor and co-founder of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. There she edited the annual anthology New Stories from the South from 1986 to 2006. She was series editor of the Houghton Mifflin annual anthology The Best American Short Stories from 1977 to 1990.
This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(August 2014) |
Official
Sources
Other