The Masterpiece Library of Short Stories. The thousand best complete tales of all times and all countries
Subtitle: I. Early stories
Edition: Selected by an international board of eminent critics
Series: The thousand best complete tales of all times and all countries
Publisher: Educational Book Co
Published: 192-?
Place of publication: London
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 766
Notes: Editorial note: A short story may be a mere anecdote of three hundred words or a work of ten or fifteen thousand. In content it may be anything from a glimpse of character, an incident, to a highly finished picture of life. But it should be a complete work of imagination, its effect achieved with a minimum of personages and events.
To select the best thousand examples was a task that could be achieved only on arbitrary lines. As to length, three thousand words was the ideal average, but this excluded some of the finest stories, so exceptions had to be allowed.  National characteristics also had consideration. Another test was the value of a story as illustrating the development of the art.
Problems of arrangement were not entirely solved by classification according to the country of each writer's origin. This puts Richard Steele into the Irish volume and separates those ideal literary partners Agnes and Egerton Castle. But it is the best possible arrangement for the work, and the index makes reference easy. The inclusion of a series of stories of the War became possible when the War itself ruled out all modern German work.
A word as to the method of selection. The general editor prepared a trial list of titles which were submitted to all the members of the Editorial Board, who rejected and added according to their individual tastes and knowledge. These individual lists were then collated and the final list evolved. The thousand stories selected  are therefore representative of the combined opinion of the whole group of editors. A very few modifications of the final list were made necessary by difficulties of copyright and considerations of Anglo-Saxon taste in certain translations from foreign literatures.
Most of the foreign stories have been specially translated, and all copyrights, in both stories and translations, the use of which authors and publishers have courteously permitted, are duly credited at the end of each volume. J.A.H.
Table of contents: title: Contents of volume I.; title: 11
label: Introductory essay; title: 27
label: I. Egyptian; title: 35
label: III. Indian; title: 57
label: xi. Classical; title: 102
label: xvii. Hebrew literature; title: 122
label: xx. Chinese; title: 126
label: xxii. Celtic; title: 148
label: xxv. Mediaeval French; title: 183
label: xxvii. Mediaeval Italian; title: 217
label: xxxvi. Scandinavian; title: 266
label: xl. Arabian; title: 302
label: xliv. Persian; title: 319
label: xlvii. Italian renaissance