The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story.

Once a year an exacting critic read America's magazines from cover to cover and chose the stories worth saving. This volume is his judgment for 1919, capturing a literature emerging from the shadow of the war.

What it's about

Compiled by Edward J. O'Brien, this is one of his renowned annual anthologies, collecting the short stories he considered the best published in American periodicals over the year, together with the yearbook, his detailed indexes, ratings, and records of the field. The selected stories are drawn from the busy world of the magazines, where American short fiction of the era chiefly lived, and reflect the range of styles and concerns of their writers. O'Brien's rankings were closely watched by editors and authors alike.

Themes

Assembled by one committed critic, the collection expresses O'Brien's sense of what gave a story lasting truth, and its contents echo the mood of a nation adjusting to peace and change. The accompanying yearbook is a careful chronicle of the American short story at a formative moment in its development.

Why it still matters

O'Brien's yearly volumes did much to dignify the short story and to advance new writers, and the series endures as a running record of American literary taste. To open this book is to encounter the fiction of 1919 filtered through the judgment of the man who did more than anyone to canonize the form. Its historical value is considerable.

Who it's for

For devotees of short fiction, for scholars of the period, and for any reader who wants to time-travel into the magazine culture that shaped modern American storytelling.