The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story.

Every year for decades, one critic combed the magazines of America and declared which stories deserved to last. This volume preserves his verdict for 1920, a portrait of a national literature finding new confidence.

What it's about

Edited by Edward J. O'Brien, this is one of the long-running annual collections that gathered the short stories he judged the strongest published in American periodicals during the year, accompanied by his yearbook, an apparatus of indexes, ratings, and records tracking the field. The stories themselves range across the styles and subjects of their moment, drawn from the crowded and lively magazine culture in which most American fiction of the period first appeared. O'Brien's selections and his star ratings carried real weight in the literary world.

Themes

As a collection assembled by a single discerning eye, the volume reflects O'Brien's convictions about what made a story true and durable, his preference for substance over mere craft. Taken together, the stories register the preoccupations of postwar America, and the yearbook documents a period when the short story was central to the country's literary life.

Why it still matters

O'Brien's annuals became an institution and a launching pad, helping to establish writers and to define the American short story as a serious art. The series is a valuable record of taste and talent year by year, and a reminder of how the magazine story shaped a whole literature. Readers can watch reputations form in real time.

Who it's for

For lovers of the short story, for students of American literary history, and for readers curious to sample the fiction of a bygone year through the eyes of its most influential champion.