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  British Short Story The - Volume...

  James S Pyke-Nott, GK...

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  These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves.  Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language. 
   
  Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind.  These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English. 
   
  Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet.  And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth.  These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties. 
   
  Way back when it was almost immoral that a woman should write.  A few pages of verse might be tolerated but anything else brought ridicule and shame.  That seems unfathomable now but centuries ago women really were chattel, with marriage being, as the Victorian author Charlotte Smith boldly stated ‘legal prostitution’.  Some of course did find a way through - Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf but for many others only by changing their names to that of men was it possible to get their book to publication and into a readers hands.  Here we include George Eliot and other examples. 
   
  We add further depth with many stories by authors who were famed and fawned over in their day.  Some wrote only a hidden gem or two before succumbing to poverty and death. There was no second career as a game show guest, reality TV contestant or youtuber. They remain almost forgotten outposts of talent who never prospered despite devoted hours of pen and brain. 
   
  Keeping to a chronological order helps us to highlight how authors through the ages played around with characters and narrative to achieve distinctive results across many scenarios, many styles and many genres. The short story became a sort of literary laboratory, an early disruptor, of how to present and how to appeal to a growing audience as a reflection of social and societal changes.  Was this bound to happen or did a growing population that could read begin to influence rather than just accept? 
   
  Moving through the centuries we gather a groundswell of authors as we hit the Victorian Age - an age of physical mass communication albeit only on an actual printed page.  An audience was offered a multitude of forms: novels (both whole and in serialised form) essays, short stories, poems all in weekly, monthly and quarterly form.  Many of these periodicals were founded or edited by literary behemoths from Dickens and Thackeray through to Jerome K Jerome and, even some female editors including Ethel Colburn Mayne, Alice Meynell and Ella D’Arcy. 
   
  Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles.  From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache.  If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it.  
   
  At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits.

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  The Cask of Amontillado

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Written in 1846, The Cask of Amontillado is a powerful tale of revenge and is considered universally to be one of Poe's best short stories. Montresor, the sinister narrator of this tale, pledges revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. Montresor intends to seek vengeance in support of his family motto: "Nemo me impune laces sit." (No one assails me with impunity.)Simple piano music sets a haunting mood, while narrator, Michael Pearl, weaves a tale you will never forget.© Public Domain ® 2016 Brook Forest Voices

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  Pillar of Fire

  Ray Bradbury

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  300 years after his death, William Lantry awakes from his coffin. One thing is very clear to him – this sterile world without superstition, fear, or imagination must be destroyed. ¶Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers of our time. He was a master storyteller, a champion of creative freedom, and a space-age visionary. He was a close friend of Ray Harryhausen, the stop motion special effects pioneer. Bradbury’s most noteworthy works include The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. “Pillar of Fire” was originally released in the summer issue of the fiction magazine Planet Stories in 1948.

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  A Death in the Desert

  Willa Cather

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  Everett’s brother rocked the world with his incredible musical talent. And Everett is… fine. But he’s okay with that. He’s a member of “a certain lovable class of men who never accomplish anything in particular”.  
   
  But when traveling in the West, Everett meets a remarkable woman who is dying, and discovers that she has a history her brother, he gives her the greatest gift of all during her final days – the gift of understanding.

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  The Roman Road

  Kenneth Grahame

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  All roads lead to Rome. The young boy telling this story cannot quite comprehend this assertion - but of one road, he is certain it is true. The Knights' Road, as he and his friends call it. A road without hedges or ditches, a road that heads straight over the downs with a purpose. One day he will set off to Rome along this road... but for the moment his attention is arrested by an artist he meets on the Knights' Road. An artist who seems to know many strange and wonderful things...

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  The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau

  Ludwig Achim von Arnim

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  Ludwig Achim von Arnim (1781-1831) was a German poet and novelist from a Prussian noble family, and one of the most notable writers in German Romanticism.The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau, written in 1881, is an engaging story which combines humour, sentiment, the eternal struggle between good and evil, and a rattling good storyline all in one.When the Commandant at Marseille learns that an invalid veteran is being transferred to his region, and that this brave soldier has suffered a head injury which causes him to behave like a madman...indeed his own wife believes him possessed by the devil...he decides to appoint him head of a tiny remote fort above the city. This fort is the depository for the regiment's supply of gunpowder. The Commandant also deploys the powder to create fireworks, and one of the tasks of the garrison is to manufacture rockets, roman candles, and Catherine wheels, which will be used for the display at the King's birthday. The invalid veteran turns out to have a great interest in pyrotechnics...and takes on his task with great enthusiasm. But then, one of his psychotic episodes sets in...and a madman in charge of a castle packed with gunpowder threatens the safety of the entire city.After all, what could possibly go wrong?

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