Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 I'm looking for shorter works that fit into the late Victorian/Edwardian period or American lit between Reconstruction and the First World War. Long novels are probably more than we can fit in at the moment, so I'm thinking novellas (Heart of Darkness length) or short stories. What are your greatest hits either by title or author? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faithr Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 The Red Badge of Courage is a short novel that is excellent. Mark Twain wrote some great short stories. O Henry was a great short story writer as well. And don't forget Edgar Allen Poe! Sarah Orne Jewett's Country of the Pointed Firs is basically a collection of short stories set in a small town in Maine, I believe. Kat Chopin is another woman writer who wrote in the time period you are interested in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 20, 2012 Author Share Posted October 20, 2012 I did find this essay on Victorian literature that included a list of authors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted October 20, 2012 Share Posted October 20, 2012 (edited) We did a large number of short stories one year when we were limited on time; it was great! It gave us the ability to really go deep into learning how short stories work. It also allows you to cover a larger number of authors, and a wide variety of genres and types of works, instead of being stuck in a "dark place" (lol) with a novel for weeks on end... Anyways, below are some ideas to choose from; all were written in your specified time boundaries, with the one exception noted below (which is set in your time frame). Most of the short stories can be found as free, full text versions online, with a little google searching. Don't know if you'd be interested in it, BUT, IEW's Windows to the World has 6 short stories that all fall either in, or extremely close to, your time frame. Enjoy! I look forward to hearing what you decide to go with! World - short stories - The Necklace (de Maupassant) -- France - The Storm (Verne) -- France - How Much Land Does a Man Need (Tolstoy) -- Russia - The Grand Inquisitor (Dostoyevski) -- Russia (a short section that stands alone, from the novel The Brothers Karamazov) World - novellas - Metamorphosis (Kafka) -- Germany UK - short novels - The Time Machine (Wells) - The Invisible Man (Wells) - War of the Worlds (Wells) - Peter Pan (Barrie) - The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde) - The Cricket on the Hearth (Dickens) - Three Men in a Boat (Jerome) UK - novellas - The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton) - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson) - A Christmas Carol (Dickens) UK - plays - Pygmalion (Shaw) - Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde) UK - short stories - The Monkey's Paw (Jacobs) - The Open Window (Saki) - Rikki Tikki Tavi (Kipling) - Sherlock Holmes short mystery stories (Doyle) - The Dead (Joyce) - Father Brown short mystery stories (Chesterton) US - short novels - Call of the Wild (London) - White Fang (London) - Turn of the Screw (James) US - plays - Our Town (Wilder) -- written in 1937, but set in 1901-1913 US - short stories - Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Bierce) - Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Crane) - The Open Boat (Crane) - Gift of the Magi (Henry) - Ransom of Red Chief (Henry) - The Last Leaf (Henry) - A Harlem Tragedy (Henry) - Jury of Her Peers (Glaspell) - short story by Kate Chopin - short story by Edith Wharton - short story by Katherine Porter - short story by Sherwood Anderson Edited October 21, 2012 by Lori D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 Great list Lori. We are doing w2w in coop, which is one reason I wanted short stories instead of novels. We spent a long time on the Civil War and now we need to move along but I didn't want them to miss the sense of the era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janice in NJ Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 I stumbled across this title last week. It doesn't really fit your criteria. It's a biography. And it's not that short. But it might check your "gives a sense of the era" box. :001_smile: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767929713/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER It's on my pre-read list (ds is doing American History next year), so I have no idea if it's appropriate. Just thought I would pass it along. Peace, Janice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Candid Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 Billy Budd by Melville Your pick from O'Henry Same with Mark Twain The Awakening by Kate Chopin And poets: Hardy, Arnold, and Dickinson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 I stumbled across this title last week. It doesn't really fit your criteria. It's a biography. And it's not that short. But it might check your "gives a sense of the era" box. :001_smile: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767929713/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER It's on my pre-read list (ds is doing American History next year), so I have no idea if it's appropriate. Just thought I would pass it along. Peace, Janice Interesting. That looks intriguing, but I suspect we won't get to it. I'm feeling like we're barely treading water between Lukeion Latin, OSU German, physics, algebra 2, lit at coop and then our outside committments. My kids have been getting introduced to the idea of homework at night and on weekends. I do still want some lit to go with the history text and lectures I'm using until WWI. I did find a copy of London in Dickens' Day, which is a small book of primary source excerpts, beginning with sections from Sketches by Boz. I think I want them to come out of this with a sense that the Victorian era had a lot in common with ours. Great scientific advances that were both celebrated and resisted. A sense that almost anything was possible on one hand with a sense that life was nasty and short and best coped with through drink or opium on another. Setting the stage for massive upheavals as WWI ravaged the continent, devastated towns and led to the fall of several monarchies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 I did find this essay on Victorian literature that included a list of authors. Thank you for posting this. The website looks quite good. Lots of background info and lists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 Thank you for posting this. The website looks quite good. Lots of background info and lists. Be aware that many of the links are to chapters from books that are quite old. One on American lit is from before 1900. Not that this makes the observations wrong, but it does point to a perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebastian (a lady) Posted October 21, 2012 Author Share Posted October 21, 2012 You are such a great help, everyone. When I asked at the library, I pretty much got blank stares and, "I'm not sure we have anything that can help with that." (From the two reference librarians) and then a referral to a Gale database that kept returning every title in the database instead of filtering by my search terms. The Hive is a lot faster, and you all knew what I meant. For this week I picked three selections from Mark Twain (Steamboat Race, Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and "Tom Sawyer Whitewashes the Fence"). Next week will probably be Twain's report on the "Burning of Clipper Ship Hornet at Sea" and Jack London's To Build a Fire (both tales of struggle against the elements). I'm adding "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service to this week. The week after that may be suspense and mystery with a Holmes story, a Father Brown mystery and maybe The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lori D. Posted October 21, 2012 Share Posted October 21, 2012 Glad we could help! :) And I LOVE getting to hear what you decided! That's always the best part, as it let's me glean from the choices of others! ;) Enjoy your late 1800s lit. adventures! Warmly, Lori D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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