The Realm of Fiction: 61 Short Stories

by James B. Hall

The Realm of Fiction brings together sixty-one representative stories from notable Russian, European, British, and American authors including twenty-two nineteenth century masters, twenty-six great modern figures, and a final section by thirteen contemporary writers.

The main impulse behind The Realm of Fiction, as with any anthology, is of course the pursuit of literary excellence--to provide a fresh collection of fiction of the highest merit. The text includes five new translations, all commissioned specifically for this anthology and all but the last appearing in English for the first time. Along with memorable fiction by the major modern writers--Kafka and Mann, Joyce and Lawrence, Faulkner and Hemingway--other significant stories, such as those by Katayev, Vasconcelos, and Rosenfeld, appear for the first time in any known anthology text. Established or new, these stories serve the same purpose: to quicken interest in all literature, past and present.

Genres: Short Stories

Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

James B. Hall was a prolific author and a distinguished teacher at the University of Oregon. Hall wrote more than 20 books -- novels, short stories and poetry -- and was widely published and anthologized.

He founded the creative writing program at Oregon and also taught at the University of California-Irvine and University of California-Santa Cruz. He was a co-founder of the Northwest Review, the UO literary magazine. His students and proteges at UO included Ken Kesey and Barry Lopez.

Reviews

[Meredith is a hot mess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the few texts available that includes the short story, The Boar Hunt by Jose Vasconcelos. Along with Vasconcelos, this anthology contains rare publications of The Brigadier by Isaac Rosenfeld and Our Father Who Art in Heaven by Valentin Katayev. It also includes one of my favorite short stories, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, plus many more from these authors:

Ambrose Bierce
Anton Chekhov
Wilkie Collins
Joseph Conrad
Fyodor Dostoevsky
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
Hermann Hesse
Ted Hughes
Franz Kafka
Rudyard Kipling
D.H Lawrence
Flannery O'Connor
O. Henry
Edgar Allan Poe
Oscar Wilde
Virginia Woolf
H. G. Wells
Leo Tolstoy
Jean-Paul Sartre

This is just to name a few! Realm of Fiction is chock full of renowned authors and contains many short stories I had not previously been aware of. It's a diverse, unique anthology that I'd love to see back in print or available via kindle.

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

My hope is always to enjoy the actual stories in a collection like this, but if that is not possible I am continuously looking for new authors. Kristi & Abby Tabby