Datasets:

Travis-ML
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ShortStory-SFT-jsonl

id string	author string	book string	title string	words int64	kind string	prompt_brief string	prompt_detailed string	genres list	text string	license string
f535b7f2963d	Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf	MISS HENDERSON’S THANKSGIVING DAY	2,109	story	Write a sentimental story about a lonely spinster who receives unexpected visitors on Thanksgiving Day, leading to a reunion with someone from her past.	Write a story set in a small 19th-century American village on Thanksgiving Day, about a solitary, prim unmarried woman in her mid-thirties who has spent years alone after rejecting a suitor she once loved. When two unexpected visitors—a weary traveler and his young daughter—arrive at her door seeking shelter from the c...	[ "domestic sentiment", "domestic sentimentality", "historical fiction", "romance" ]	Thanksgiving Day dawned clearly and frostily upon the little village of Castleton Hollow. The stage which connected daily with the nearest railroad station (for as yet Castleton Hollow had not arrived at the dignity of one of its own) came fully freighted, both inside and out. There were children and children’s childre...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
7f2eca7a5fe1	Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf	WIDE-AWAKE	1,598	story	Write a fairy tale about a poor boy who takes work with an old woman to support his blind mother. He's tested on his honesty and rewarded for choosing his mother's welfare over wealth.	Write a fairy tale of about 1600 words set in an unnamed old city, following a young boy named Wide-awake who leaves his blind mother to seek work and fortune. When a kindly old woman offers him employment as a shepherd for three months, he accepts eagerly, intending to return with payment to help his mother. During he...	[ "coming-of-age", "fairy tale", "heartwarming", "moral fable" ]	Many years ago, in a city whose name I cannot now recall, there lived a poor woman, whose husband had died, leaving nothing but a little son. For some time, she continued to support herself, and her son, whom she dearly loved, by working early and late at the spinning-wheel. But, after a while, a heavy misfortune fell ...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
b486fdde7bc9	Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf	THE ROYAL CARPENTER OF AMSTERDAM	2,315	story	A Russian workman arrives at an Amsterdam dock yard with a letter of recommendation and proves to be an exceptional builder. Write a historical fiction tale of about 2300 words revealing his true identity and how he transforms the life of an ambitious young carpenter.	Write a historical fiction story of around 2300 words set in 17th-century Amsterdam about a mysterious Russian workman who arrives at the royal Dock Yard with a letter of introduction from the Russian ambassador. He quickly proves himself to be the most skilled worker there, but maintains absolute secrecy about his pas...	[ "character study", "historical fiction", "revelation", "romance" ]	The superintendent of the Dock Yard in Amsterdam was seated in his office one afternoon, indulging himself in smoking a rude pipe; a luxury then recently imported from the colony of Virginia, in the New World. His reflections, whatever they were, were broken in upon by a knock at the door,—not a timid, hesitating knoc...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
19f4955fe668	Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf	GOTTFRIED THE SCHOLAR	1,857	story	Write a cautionary tale about a proud scholar who has devoted his life to books and learning at the expense of human connection and virtue. Around 1900 words.	Write a story about an arrogant scholar who has devoted his entire life to academic pursuits at the expense of human connection and compassion. The narrative should show how his pride in his vast learning blinds him to the beauty of nature and the suffering of others around him, until a catastrophic fire destroys his l...	[ "character transformation", "moral fable", "philosophical fiction", "victorian didactic fiction" ]	Alone in his study sat Gottfried the scholar. The shelves which lined the apartment on every side groaned beneath the weight of bulky quartoes and ponderous folios. The accumulated learning of many ages and countries, flowing in diverse channels, had mingled into one stream, and, with its fertilizing current, contribut...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
ec00c48af055	Alger, Horatio, Jr.	Bertha's Christmas Vision: An Autumn Sheaf	PETER PLUNKETT’S ADVENTURE	918	story	A shoemaker who believes in fairies and genies gets tricked by a mischievous neighbor who wants to play a practical joke on him. Write a humorous tale set in old Portland.	Create a humorous story of about 900 words set in 19th-century Portland featuring a shoe maker named Peter Plunkett who is an imaginative dreamer obsessed with Arabian Nights fantasy tales and genuinely believes in genies and fairies. When a mischievous local squire discovers Peter's gullibility, he decides to play an ...	[ "19th century humor", "comic fiction", "fairy tale satire", "humorous fiction" ]	Some years since, there lived in Portland a worthy shoemaker named Peter Plunkett. Unpoetical as his name may appear, Peter possessed a vivid imagination, which, had it been properly cultivated, might have made him, perchance, a poet or a novelist. As it was, he chiefly employed it in building air-castles of more than ...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
b3437a817a8d	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Emperor's New Clothes	1,869	story	Write a fairy tale satire about a vain emperor obsessed with clothes who is tricked by two con-artist weavers into believing they've made magical garments invisible to the unfit. About 1900 words.	Create a satirical fairy tale about a vain emperor obsessed with fashion who is duped by two clever con artists posing as weavers. They convince him they're creating magical clothes that are invisible to anyone unfit for their position or hopelessly foolish, then proceed to do nothing while pocketing his gold. The stor...	[ "fable", "fairy tale", "humorous", "satire" ]	Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers; nor did he care to go either to the theatre or the chase, except for the opportunities then afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He ...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
479fb7058ed3	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Swineherd	1,480	story	Write a fairy tale where a poor prince woos an emperor's daughter by disguising himself as a swineherd and creating magical gadgets she desires more than his genuine gifts.	Create a fairy tale of about 1500 words in which a proud princess rejects a prince's genuine gifts and courtship, only to fall for him when he disguises himself as a lowborn swineherd and creates clever, whimsical magical trinkets that appeal to her vanity. The story should have a satirical, moral tone that exposes her...	[ "fairy tale", "moral fable", "satirical romance" ]	There was once a poor Prince, who had a kingdom. His kingdom was very small, but still quite large enough to marry upon; and he wished to marry. It was certainly rather cool of him to say to the Emperor's daughter, “Will you have me?” But so he did; for his name was renowned far and wide; and there were a hundred prin...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
08b365ff1fc0	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Real Princess	411	story	A fairy tale about a prince searching the world for a true princess to marry. When a mysterious maiden arrives during a storm claiming to be royalty, the queen devises a test to verify her authenticity. Around 400 words.	Write a fairy tale about a prince searching the world for a genuine princess to marry, only to have one mysteriously arrive at his castle gates during a terrible storm. The queen devises an unusual test to determine if she is truly of royal blood, and the results prove surprising. The tone should be whimsical and gentl...	[ "fairy tale", "fantasy", "romantic", "whimsical" ]	There was once a Prince who wished to marry a Princess; but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled all over the world in hopes of finding such a lady; but there was always something wrong. Princesses he found in plenty; but whether they were real Princesses it was impossible for him to decide, for now one thing...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
371849e0d5e4	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Leap-Frog	667	story	A fable where a flea, grasshopper, and leap-frog compete in a jumping contest for a princess's hand. Around 650 words.	Write a fairy tale about a competition where a King offers his daughter's hand to whoever can jump the highest. Three contestants—a refined flea, a boastful grasshopper, and a quiet leap-frog—each demonstrate their abilities with very different results. The story should have a whimsical, slightly ironic tone that gentl...	[ "fable", "fairy tale", "satire", "satirical" ]	A Flea, a Grasshopper, and a Leap-frog once wanted to see which could jump highest; and they invited the whole world, and everybody else besides who chose to come to see the festival. Three famous jumpers were they, as everyone would say, when they all met together in the room. “I will give my daughter to him who jump...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
747085b677fe	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Bell	2,015	story	Write a fairy tale where a mysterious bell sound draws people from a town into the forest, each searching for its source but finding only what matches their character and desires.	Write a fairy tale about a mysterious bell sound heard from a forest that draws many people to search for it, with particular focus on the spiritual journey of a poor boy and a king's son who both pursue it for different reasons after their confirmation ceremony. Make it allegorical and philosophical, exploring themes ...	[ "allegory", "fairy tale", "philosophical allegory", "spiritual journey" ]	People said “The Evening Bell is sounding, the sun is setting.” For a strange wondrous tone was heard in the narrow streets of a large town. It was like the sound of a church-bell: but it was only heard for a moment, for the rolling of the carriages and the voices of the multitude made too great a noise. Those persons...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
f84e2321a066	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Happy Family	1,296	story	Write a fairy tale about snails living in a burdock forest who believe they are creatures of great importance destined for a grand fate at the manor-house.	Write a fairy tale about a family of aristocratic snails living in an overgrown garden, centered around their beliefs about their own importance and their anticipation of a mysterious fate involving the manor house. The snails should have a proud sense of heritage and pass down stories about their ancestors being serve...	[ "fairy tale", "philosophical", "whimsical" ]	Really, the largest green leaf in this country is a dock-leaf; if one holds it before one, it is like a whole apron, and if one holds it over one's head in rainy weather, it is almost as good as an umbrella, for it is so immensely large. The burdock never grows alone, but where there grows one there always grow several...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
583589d81a0d	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Story of a Mother	1,935	story	A mother's sick child is visited by Death. She pursues him through a magical winter landscape to save her child, but learns a difficult lesson about faith and surrender.	Write a dark fairy tale about a desperate mother who pursues Death itself after he takes her dying child, encountering supernatural obstacles and guides who test her love and sacrifice. The story should be set in a harsh winter landscape and explore themes of grief, faith, and the limits of maternal devotion.	[ "fairy tale", "gothic", "magical realism", "melancholic" ]	A mother sat there with her little child. She was so downcast, so afraid that it should die! It was so pale, the small eyes had closed themselves, and it drew its breath so softly, now and then, with a deep respiration, as if it sighed; and the mother looked still more sorrowfully on the little creature. Then a knocki...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
ed1e2476c234	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The False Collar	890	story	Write a fairy tale about an old false collar that becomes infatuated with a garter during laundry day, leading him on a series of romantic misadventures with household items. Around 900 words.	Write a whimsical fairy tale of about 900 words featuring a vain collar who encounters various household items during laundry day and develops romantic delusions about each of them. The collar should be a boastful character who falsely claims to own possessions he doesn't actually have, and the other items should react...	[ "cautionary", "fairy tale", "humorous", "morality tale" ]	There was once a fine gentleman, all of whose moveables were a boot-jack and a hair-comb: but he had the finest false collars in the world; and it is about one of these collars that we are now to hear a story. It was so old, that it began to think of marriage; and it happened that it came to be washed in company with ...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
8a6b626ba2d9	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Little Match Girl	1,014	story	A poor girl selling matches on New Year's Eve finds herself alone, cold, and desperate on the frozen streets. Write a poignant fairy tale about what happens when she lights her matches one by one.	Write a poignant tale of around 1000 words set on New Year's Eve about a desperate street child who tries to survive a freezing night by selling matches. As she grows colder and more desperate, she experiences increasingly vivid hallucinations or visions triggered by striking the matches, each one offering her temporar...	[ "fairy tale", "magical realism", "tragedy" ]	Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening--the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large s...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
8e563d94bd69	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Dream of Little Tuk	1,891	story	Write a fairy tale where a poor boy helps an old washerwoman, then has magical dreams about Danish towns that help him learn his geography lesson.	Write a fairy tale of about 1900 words set in Denmark, following a poor boy named Tuk who must learn his geography lesson but is distracted by caring for his younger sister. When he falls asleep with his geography book under his pillow, he embarks on a magical dream journey through the towns of Zealand, encountering pe...	[ "coming-of-age", "fairy tale", "magical realism" ]	Ah! yes, that was little Tuk: in reality his name was not Tuk, but that was what he called himself before he could speak plain: he meant it for Charles, and it is all well enough if one does but know it. He had now to take care of his little sister Augusta, who was much younger than himself, and he was, besides, to lea...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
12f63024c421	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Naughty Boy	835	story	Write a whimsical tale about 850 words where an old poet rescues a mysterious child from a storm, only to discover the child's true identity and mischievous nature. Frame it as a cautionary story told to young readers.	Write a whimsical fairy tale set in a timeless, storybook world where a kind old poet shelters a mysterious child during a terrible storm, only to discover the child's true identity and mischievous nature. The story should have a moral lesson for children about a certain universal force that causes both joy and heartac...	[ "allegorical", "cautionary", "fairy tale", "whimsical" ]	Along time ago, there lived an old poet, a thoroughly kind old poet. As he was sitting one evening in his room, a dreadful storm arose without, and the rain streamed down from heaven; but the old poet sat warm and comfortable in his chimney-corner, where the fire blazed and the roasting apple hissed. “Those who have n...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
ffc4370aec3e	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Andersen's Fairy Tales	The Red Shoes	2,244	story	A poor girl receives a pair of red shoes that become enchanted, forcing her to dance uncontrollably. Write a dark fairy tale about vanity, punishment, and eventual redemption.	Write a cautionary fairy tale about a poor girl who receives beautiful red shoes and becomes obsessed with them, leading to a curse of endless dancing. The story should explore themes of vanity, temptation, and redemption, set in a European village with a tone that's dark and moralistic but ultimately hopeful.	[ "dark fantasy", "fairy tale", "gothic", "moral allegory" ]	There was once a little girl who was very pretty and delicate, but in summer she was forced to run about with bare feet, she was so poor, and in winter wear very large wooden shoes, which made her little insteps quite red, and that looked so dangerous! In the middle of the village lived old Dame Shoemaker; she sat and...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
3714e80ca7fa	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen	A Story	1,729	story	A pastor preaches hellfire and damnation, but his wife questions God's mercy. After she dies, her ghost visits him on a quest to find a sinner worthy of eternal punishment. What does he discover?	Create a story of about 1700 words set in a small European town where a stern, fire-and-brimstone pastor delivers a harsh sermon on Sunday while the natural world outside celebrates in beauty and peace. When his gentle wife questions his doctrine of eternal damnation that evening, it sets in motion a supernatural journ...	[ "moral allegory", "moral fable", "philosophical fiction", "spiritual allegory" ]	In the garden all the apple-trees were in blossom. They had hastened to bring forth flowers before they got green leaves, and in the yard all the ducklings walked up and down, and the cat too: it basked in the sun and licked the sunshine from its own paws. And when one looked at the fields, how beautifully the corn sto...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
4629cb4ab16e	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen	By the Almshouse Window	672	story	Write a poignant story about an old maid in an almshouse who watches children playing on a rampart outside her window, and as she observes them, she reflects on her own lost youth and the tragic romance that shaped her life.	Write a poignant story of about 650 words set in 19th-century Copenhagen, centered on an elderly woman living in a poor almshouse who gazes out at children playing on a grass-covered rampart. As she watches them, her mind drifts through memories of her own youth—from carefree childhood to a transformative confirmation ...	[ "coming-of-age tragedy", "historical", "historical fiction", "literary fiction" ]	Near the grass-covered rampart which encircles Copenhagen lies a great red house. Balsams and other flowers greet us from the long rows of windows in the house, whose interior is sufficiently poverty-stricken; and poor and old are the people who inhabit it. The building is the Warton Almshouse. Look! at the window the...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
49150b535435	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen	The Angel	954	story	Write a fairy tale about a dead child being carried to heaven by an angel, who gathers flowers along the way—including one special withered flower with a story of sacrifice and love.	Write a poignant fantasy story about 950 words where a deceased child is guided to heaven by an angel who shows him various flowers to bring as gifts to God. The angel selects not just beautiful blooms from gardens, but also a withered, discarded flower from a trash heap, and reveals through flashback why this humble f...	[ "bittersweet", "fairy tale", "fantasy", "melancholic beauty" ]	"Whenever a good child dies, an angel of God comes down from heaven, takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies with him over all the places which the child had loved during his life. Then he gathers a large handful of flowers, which he carries up to the Almighty, that they may bloom...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)
55322539b66d	Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)	Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen	The Bell-deep	1,297	story	A folklore tale set in medieval Odense about a church bell that falls into a river and begins speaking to a water spirit, revealing historical secrets and moral lessons. Around 1300 words.	Create a fairy tale set in medieval Denmark about a magical church bell that falls into a river and begins conversing with a water spirit who lives in its depths. The story should be told from a folkloric, grandmother-telling-stories perspective and blend historical elements (like King Canute) with fantasy and wonder. ...	[ "fairy tale", "folklore", "magical realism" ]	"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" It sounds up from the "bell-deep" in the Odense-Au. Every child in the old town of Odense, on the island of Funen, knows the Au, which washes the gardens round about the town, and flows on under the wooden bridges from the dam to the water-mill. In the Au grow the yellow water-lilies and brown f...	Public domain (Project Gutenberg)

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Public Domain Short Fiction with Prompts

719 complete short stories (300 to 2500 words) by 26 authors whose work is in the public domain, each paired with a natural-language request that could plausibly have produced it. Built for supervised fine-tuning of small language models on fiction, where the usual sources (forum stories, model-generated stories) lack the structural control of published short fiction.

Fields

field	description
`id`	stable id (hash of author + title)
`author`	author as catalogued by the source
`book`	the collection or volume the story was taken from
`title`	story title
`words`	word count of `text`
`prompt_brief`	a short request (1-2 sentences): premise and setup only, sometimes a length target; never the author or title
`prompt_detailed`	a fuller request (2-4 sentences): premise, tone, point of view, setting or era; sometimes a length target; often outlines the arc (see caveats)
`genres`	up to 4 genre or mood tags
`kind`	`story`: every text was classified by Claude as a complete, self-contained short story (chapters, essays and verse were dropped)
`text`	the story, one paragraph per line, blank line between paragraphs
`license`	provenance note for the text

For chat-format SFT, use either prompt (or sample between them) as the user turn and text as the assistant turn.

How it was built

Texts come from public-domain plain-text editions of short story collections (transcribed by Project Gutenberg volunteers; see https://www.gutenberg.org). Each collection was split into stories using its table of contents, transcription headers/footers and illustration markers were removed, hard line wraps were undone, and novels (numbered chapters), verse and non-fiction were excluded. Stories appearing in more than one collection were kept once.

Each text was then classified by Claude (claude-haiku-4-5) as a complete short story, a novel chapter, an essay, a poem, or other; only stories are included. Prompts were written by the same model shown the full story and asked for the request a person might have typed to get it, in two styles (brief and detailed), without naming the author, title or source, and without revealing the ending. About half the prompts carry a length target matching the story. Prompts were spot-checked, not fully hand-reviewed. Two known weaknesses: the detailed prompts frequently outline the whole arc (sometimes including the ending) despite being asked not to, so they read more like a synopsis than a casual request; and phrasing is less varied than intended ("Write a ..." opens about half the brief prompts and most of the detailed ones). If you want prompt diversity, mix with other sources or rewrite the prompts.

Composition

Length (words): 1000-1499: 173, 1500+: 438, 300-499: 8, 500-999: 100

Top authors: Lang (150), Andersen (98), Chekhov (98), Grimm (89), Maupassant (82), Kipling (41), Baum (33), Nesbit (20), Poe (16), Twain (16), Potter (10), Hawthorne (9), Wells (8), London (7), Doyle (6)

Caveats

Most texts are from the 1830s to 1920s and carry the register of their period; a model trained only on this set will write like it. Mix with contemporary data if that is not what you want. Some stories reflect attitudes of their time. Fairy tales and children's stories (Lang's colored fairy books, Andersen, Grimm, Baum, Nesbit, Potter) are over half the set: they are what survives a filter for complete stories under 2,500 words from this period. The rest is mostly Chekhov, Maupassant, Kipling, Poe, Twain and Hawthorne.

License

Texts: public domain. Prompts and tags: released under CC0 1.0. The transcriptions were obtained from Project Gutenberg; this dataset is not affiliated with or endorsed by Project Gutenberg.

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