This is an anthology of the American short story between the Civil War and World War I, containing 47 stories by 30 writers. Realist writers, represented by Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin and Willa Cather among others, sought to paint "life as it is, human feelings in their true proportions and relations". There are introductory essays on the historical and literary context of the Age of Realism, a chronology, critical headnotes and minibiographies.

About the Author
James Nagel, Edison Distonguished Professor of English at the University of Georgia, has edited several collections on the works of Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and Hamlin Garland, as well as the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of John Steinbeck's Pastures of Heaven.

Tom Quirk is the Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the editor of the Penguin Classics editions of Mark Twain's Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches (1994) and Ambrose Bierce's Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories (2000) and co-editor of The Portable American Realism Reader (1997). His other books include Coming to Grips with Huckleberry Finn (1993), Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction (1997) and Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination (2001).

Book Information
ISBN 9780140268300
Author Various
Format Paperback
Page Count 640
Imprint Viking Portable Library
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 508g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 35mm