The Online Books Page

Short story

Here are entered works on the short story as a literary form and the art of short story writing. Collections of stories are entered under Short stories.

See also what's at Wikipedia, your library, or elsewhere.

• Authorship
• Fiction
• Short stories

• Short story -- Authorship
• Short story -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
• Short story -- Technique

• Story, Short
• Short story -- History and criticism
• Short stories -- History and criticism

• The Classic Short Story, 1870-1925: Theory of a Genre (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2014), by Florence Goyet (multiple formats with commentary at openbookpublishers.com)
• The Elinor Glyn System of Writing (4 volumes; Auburn, NY: The Authors' Press, c1922), by Elinor Glyn (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• Plotting the Short Story: A Practical Exposition of Germ-Plots, What They are and Where to Find Them; The Structure and Development of the Plot; and the Relation of the Plot to the Story (Franklin, OH: James Knapp Reeve, 1922), by Seymour Cunningham Chunn
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust; US access only
• How to Write Short Stories (Cincinnati: The Writer's Digest, 1921), by L. Josephine Bridgart
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Stories Editors Buy and Why (Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., c1921), ed. by Jean Wick (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Art and Business of Story Writing (New York: Macmillan, c1912), by Walter B. Pitkin
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Art of Story-Writing (Springfield, MA: Home Correspondence School, c1919), by J. Berg Esenwein and Mary D. Chambers
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust; US access only
• The Short Story (New York: G. H. Doran Co., ca. 1916), by Barry Pain (page images at HathiTrust)
• Short Story Writing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story (New York: Baker and Taylor, c1900), by Charles Raymond Barrett (Gutenberg text)
• Today's Short Stories Analyzed: An Informal Encyclopedia of Short Story Art as Exemplified in Contemporary Magazine Fiction (New York et al.: Oxford University Press, 1918), by Robert Wilson Neal (page images at HathiTrust)
• Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing, and Sale of the Modern Short-Story (New York: Hinds, Noble and Eldredge, c1909), by J. Berg Esenwein (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing, and Sale of the Modern Short-Story (New York: Hinds, Noble and Eldredge, c1918), by J. Berg Esenwein (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Advance of the American Short Story (second edition; New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1931), by Edward J. O'Brien (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Art of Short Story Writing (Cincinnati: Publishers Syndicate, 1910), by George Randolph Chester
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Development (New York: American Book Company, 1907), by Brander Matthews (HTML at Bartleby)
• This Fiction Business (New York: Covici, Friede, 1929), by H. Bedford-Jones (page images at HathiTrust)

• How to Write a Short Story: An Exposition of the Technique of Short Fiction (New York: Editor Pub. Co., 1906), by Leslie W. Quirk (page images at HathiTrust)
• Short Stories in The Making: A Writers' and Students' Introduction to the Technique and Practical Composition of Short Stories, Including an Adaptation of the Principles of the Stage Plot to Short Story Writing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1914), by Robert Wilson Neal
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• How to Write Fiction, Especially the Art of Short Story Writing (New York: Riverside Literary Bureau, C. T. Dillingham and Co., c1894), by Sherwin Cody
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• How to Write Fiction, Especially the Art of Short Story Writing: A Practical Study of Technique (London: Bellairs and Co., 1895), by Sherwin Cody (multiple formats at archive.org)

• The Contemporary Short Story: A Practical Manual (Boston et al.: D. C. Heath and Co., c1916), by Harry Torsey Baker (multiple formats at archive.org)

• How to Study "The Best Short Stories": An Analysis of Edward J. O'Brien's Annual Volumes of the Best Short Stories of the Year, Prepared for the Use of Writers and Other Students of the Short-Story (Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., c1919), by Blanche Colton Williams (page images at HathiTrust)
• Short Stories in The Making: A Writers' and Students' Introduction to the Technique and Practical Composition of Short Stories, Including an Adaptation of the Principles of the Stage Plot to Short Story Writing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1914), by Robert Wilson Neal
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• How to Write Fiction, Especially the Art of Short Story Writing (New York: Riverside Literary Bureau, C. T. Dillingham and Co., c1894), by Sherwin Cody
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• How to Write Fiction, Especially the Art of Short Story Writing: A Practical Study of Technique (London: Bellairs and Co., 1895), by Sherwin Cody (multiple formats at archive.org)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• Bad Ideas About Writing (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries Digital Publishing Institute, c2017), ed. by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe (PDF with commentary at wvu.edu)
• Whose Book is it Anyway? A View From Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2019), ed. by Janis Jefferies and Sarah Kember (multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers)
• Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1988), by Peggy Kamuf (PDF and EPub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• The Work of Authorship (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), ed. by Mireille M. M. van Eechoud (PDF at oapen.org)
• A Vindication of the Press (1718) (Augustan Reprint Society publication #29; Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1951), by Daniel Defoe, contrib. by Clinton Williams (Gutenberg text)
• The Psychology of Writing Success (New York: The Business bourse, 1933), ed. by J. George Frederick, contrib. by A. A. Brill, Thyra Samter Winslow, Mary Austin, Floyd Dell, and Thomas H. Uzzell (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Writer's Book: A Compendium of Information Upon Matters Pertaining to the Trade of Authorship (Franklin, OH: J. K. Reeve, c1922), by James Knapp Reeve (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Act of Writing: A Media Theory Approach, by Daniel Chandler (Word with commentary in the UK)
• The Art of Short Story Writing (Cincinnati: Publishers Syndicate, 1910), by George Randolph Chester
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Art of Story Writing: Facts and Information About Literary Work of Practical Value of Both Amateur and Professional Writers (New York: Sully and Kleinteich, 1913), by Nathaniel C. Fowler (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Author's Craft, by Arnold Bennett (Gutenberg text)
• The Author's Year Book and Guide for 1904: Including Some 600 Names and Addresses of Publishers and Publications to Whom Manuscripts May be Sold (1904), ed. by W. E. Price (page images at HathiTrust)
• Beyond Life: Dizain des Demiurges (New York: R. M. McBride and Co., 1919), by James Branch Cabell (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Craftsmanship of Writing (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1920), by Frederic Taber Cooper (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Fiction Factory: Being the Experience of a Writer Who, for Twenty-Two Years, Has Kept a Story-Mill Grinding Successfully (published under "John Milton Edwards" pen name; Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Company, c1912), by William Wallace Cook
  • Gutenberg text
  • page images at Google; US access only
• If You Don't Write Fiction (New York: R. M. McBride Co., 1920), by Charles Phelps Cushing (Gutenberg text and page images)
• Intentions (London: Methuen and Co., 1913), by Oscar Wilde (Gutenberg text)
• Intentions: The Decay of Lying; Pen, Pencil and Poison; The Critic as Artist; The Truth of Masks (New York: Brentano's, 1905), by Oscar Wilde, contrib. by Percival Pollard
  • page images at HathiTrust
  • multiple formats at archive.org
• How to Write and Sell a Novel (revised from Why Write a Novel?; New York: Woodford Press, 1948), by Jack Woodford (page images at HathiTrust)
• Trials of Authorship: Anterior Forms and Poetic Reconstruction from Wyatt to Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), by Jonathan V. Crewe (HTML at UC Press)
• The Art of Inventing Characters (Franklin, OH: J. K. Reeve, 1922), by Georges Polti, trans. by Lucille Ray (page images at HathiTrust)
• Books Fatal to Their Authors, by P. H. Ditchfield (Gutenberg text)
• Conjectures on Original Composition, by Edward Young (HTML at Toronto)
• Essays in the Art of Writing, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Gutenberg text)
• My First Book (London: Chatto and Windus, 1894), contrib. by Walter Besant, William Clark Russell, Grant Allen, Hall Caine, George R. Sims, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, M. E. Braddon, F. W. Robinson, H. Rider Haggard, R. M. Ballantyne, Israel Zangwill, Morley Roberts, David Christie Murray, Marie Corelli, Jerome K. Jerome, John Strange Winter, Bret Harte, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Robert Williams Buchanan, and Robert Louis Stevenson (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)
• The Principles of Success in Literature, by George Henry Lewes (Gutenberg text)
• The Stories Editors Buy and Why (Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., c1921), ed. by Jean Wick (multiple formats at archive.org)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.