The Golden Argosy: A Collection of the Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language

by Van H. Cartmell (Editor), Charles Grayson (Editor)

The Golden Argosy: The Most Celebrated Short Stories in the English Language is an anthology edited by Charles Grayson and Van H. Cartmell, and published by Dial Press in 1955. It is famous for being the favorite book of novelist Stephen King.

Stories
• I'm a fool by Sherwood Anderson
• The happy hypocrite by Max Beerbohm
• The devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét
• The damned thing by Ambrose Bierce
• The Chink and the child by Thomas Burke
• Paul's case by Willa Cather
• Back for Christmas by John Collier
• Youth by Joseph Conrad
• The bar sinister by Richard Harding Davis
• The Red-Headed League by Arthur Conan Doyle
• A rose for Emily by William Faulkner
• Old Man Minick by Edna Ferber
• The rich boy by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The celestial omnibus by E.M. Forster
• The three strangers by Thomas Hardy
• The outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte
• The killers by Ernest Hemingway
• The gift of the Magi by O. Henry
• The Gioconda smile by Aldous Huxley
• The monkey's paw by W.W. Jacobs
• The man who would be king by Rudyard Kipling
• The incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney by Rudyard Kipling
• Champion by Ring Lardner
• To build a fire by Jack London
• The fly by Katherine Mansfield
• Rain by W. Somerset Maugham
• Big blonde by Dorothy Parker
• The murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
• The gold-bug by Edgar Allan Poe
• Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter
• Tobermory by Saki
• The leader of the people by John Steinbeck
• Markheim by Robert L. Stevenson
• A lodging for the night by Robert L. Stevenson
• The lady or the tiger? by Frank R. Stockton
• Monsieur Beaucaire by Booth Tarkington
• The secret life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
• The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
• The other wise man by Henry Van Dyke
• Chickamauga by Thomas Wolfe

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels

656 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Van Henry Cartmell (1896 -1966) was an American book editor.

From 1936 to 1950, Mr. Cartmell was an editor with Doubleday & Co. He served for several years as editor in chief of the Garden City Publishing Company, a Doubleday subsidiary. Mr. Cartmell collaborated with Bennett Cerf in the editing of several anthologies of plays.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen King called this basically the best short story collection ever and that was enough for me. I've been searching it out since, figuring something as wonderful as King says wouldn't be so hard to find (I eventually had to check it out from a university library after not finding it for years second-hand, and refusing to pay 30-some-odd dollars online).

I was expecting something a little bolder perhaps than this staid anthology of popular classics -- the editors basically printed the most often-published stories of the previous 70 years or so -- but I can't complain about the results. It serves as an excellent introduction to the classics of the format; I'm using it as a sort of jumping off point for an in-depth exploration of short stories per se. It has served me well in this respect, showing me essentially a baseline for high quality short literature, and in many cases the very birth of certain styles and techniques. I would recommend it to fans of classic literature for that reason alone.

Overall I really liked almost half of the stories, finding the other half forgettable. I absolutely loved three of them (London's "To Build a Fire," Maugham's "Rain" and Tarkington's "Monsieur Beaucaire") and adored a few more. 40 stories is a lot and you can't like 'em all I don't think. Here are the ones that stuck with me:

"The Devil and Daniel Webster" - Stephen Vincent Benet
"Back for Christmas" - John Collier
"Youth" - Joseph Conrad
"The Bar Sinister" - Richard Harding Davis
"A Rose for Emily" - William Faulkner
"Old Man Minick" - Edna Ferber
"The Three Strangers" - Thomas Hardy
"The Monkey's Paw" - W.W. Jacobs
"Champion" - Ring Lardner
"The Fly" - Katherine Mansfield
"Murder in the Rue Morgue" and "The Gold-Bug" - Edgar Allen Poe
"Chickamauga" - Thomas Wolfe

The Poe stories are of course classics, and his most published ever according to Wikipedia, but I couldn't help being a little disappointed not to have some of his more macabre stuff like "The Tell-Tale Heart" or "The Pit and the Pendulum" or "The Cask of Amontillado." It's strange for me to have to reorient my perspective of Poe to consider him almost first and foremost the creator of the modern detective story. Strange but true.

As for my loves, well I don't know, I think you have to experience them to really understand what I want to say here. For example, sure you know Jack London is an outdoorsman and a frontiers-y type of writer, that he likes his snow and dogs, but you don't know until you read "To Build a Fire" that he's also a master of high suspense, bringing the cold to you as you've never felt from a book, and making you suffer along with his poor misguided protagonist. I have rarely been as tense while reading anything.

"Rain" stayed with me for days afterward, and I can still think back with a smile upon its perfection. I see in it a precursor to a lot of what Salinger was trying to do in Nine Stories, what with this unbearable interpersonal tension that winds up snapped in the most horrific and bizarre way possible. The resolution is at the same time shocking and utterly inevitable, and it hits you like something really heavy that hits things hard.

"Monsieur Beaucaire" is a wonderfully elaborate mystery that you don't know is a mystery until its Dickensian ending, an ending which is not quite Dickensian because the reader is kept in the dark along with the rest of the characters. It's beautiful though. I also want to give a special shoutout to "Chickamauga" for the amazing voice, much better done IMO than Twain in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog," which I have to say I still don't really get as a piece of literature.

So the best ever? Not sure, some of it definitely feels stuffy and dated. I'm also definitely not qualified to say, but someone like Stephen King might know. Is it something you should read if you like classic literature and short stories? Definitely. Something I want to own some day, when I can justify the asking price for an out-of-print book? Also yes.


Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek

[Martin Ortiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being Stephen King's favorite book, I decided to run down the Table of Contents. With most of the stories being in public domain, all but 2 of the 40 stories are available on-line from legitimate sources. I put together links to those stories which are available.
http://martinhillortiz.blogspot.com/2...

Most of the stories hold up well. I can see how a consummate storyteller would choose this as his favorite.

The Table of Contents.

I'm a Fool by Sherwood Anderson (1922)
The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm (1897)
The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét (1937)
The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce (1893)
The Chink and the Child by Thomas Burke (1917)
Paul's Case by Willa Cather (1905)
Back for Christmas by John Collier (1939)
Youth by Joseph Conrad (1898)
The Bar Sinister by Richard Harding Davis (1903)
The Red-Headed League by A. Conan Doyle (1891)
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner (1930)
Old Man Minick by Edna Ferber (1922)
The Rich Boy by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1926)
The Celestial Omnibus by E.M. Forster (1911)
The Three Strangers by Thomas Hardy (1883)
The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte (1892)
The Killers by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry (1904)
The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley (1921)
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs (1902)
The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling (1888)
The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney by Rudyard Kipling (1899)
Champion by Ring Lardner (1916)
To Build a Fire by Jack London (1902, 1908)
The Fly by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
Rain by W. Somerset Maugham (1921)
Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker (1929)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
Tobermory by Saki (1911)
The Leader of the People by John Steinbeck (1937)
Markheim by Robert L. Stevenson (1885)
A Lodging for the Night by Robert L. Stevenson (1887)
The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton (1882)
Monsieur Beaucaire by Booth Tarkington (1900)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber (1939)
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain (1867)
The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke. (1895)
Chickamauga by Thomas Wolfe. (1937)

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most fascinating collections of stories. I read it on the recommendation of Stephen King.

[Jenifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is out of print and I feel lucky that I was able to acquire it as an inter-library loan. At first I was dying to have a copy of my own, but I'm content that almost all of these classic stories are in the public domain and that I can access them there any time I want. It was first published in 1947 and is a collection of familiar and frequently re-printed in their time.

It was a bit of a project, getting these all read, but I enjoyed so many of them. The authors were almost all dead by the 1930's so they are old. Several deal with war and patriotism and are what we now consider to be racist.

I'm going to enter each one as a separate review because I want to remember that I read them.

User Martin Ortiz published a list of the table of contents and I copied it from his review adding an asterisk by my five-star faves

I'm a Fool by Sherwood Anderson (1922)
The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm (1897)
The Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benét (1937)*
The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce (1893)
The Chink and the Child by Thomas Burke (1917)*
Paul's Case by Willa Cather (1905)
Back for Christmas by John Collier (1939)*
Youth by Joseph Conrad (1898)
The Bar Sinister by Richard Harding Davis (1903)*
The Red-Headed League by A. Conan Doyle (1891)*
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner (1930)
Old Man Minick by Edna Ferber (1922)*
The Rich Boy by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1926)
The Celestial Omnibus by E.M. Forster (1911)
The Three Strangers by Thomas Hardy (1883)
The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte (1892)
The Killers by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry (1904)
The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley (1921)
The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs (1902)
The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling (1888)
The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney by Rudyard Kipling (1899)
Champion by Ring Lardner (1916)
To Build a Fire by Jack London (1902, 1908)
The Fly by Katherine Mansfield (1922)
Rain by W. Somerset Maugham (1921)
Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker (1929)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)*
Flowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter (1930)
Tobermory by Saki (1911)
The Leader of the People by John Steinbeck (1937)
Markheim by Robert L. Stevenson (1885)
A Lodging for the Night by Robert L. Stevenson (1887)
The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton (1882)*
Monsieur Beaucaire by Booth Tarkington (1900)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber (1939)
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain (1867)
The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke. (1895)*
Chickamauga by Thomas Wolfe. (1937)*

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an out-of-print book which is a collection of short stories from various authors. Stephen King has said that this is one of his favorite books, so my curiosity was piqued and I had to read this. There are a total of 40 short stories in this book, all but one of which are public domain and free to read on the internet (which is a good thing considering the book is very hard to find). One gentleman got hold of the table of contents and made a giant listing of the links to each story on his blog, here: http://martinhillortiz.blogspot.com/2... which was how I read this.

You are bound to recognize at least one story or another; I don't think you can get out of high school without reading "A Rose for Emily" or "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Still other stories are tales I would never have read or even come across outside of this book. There is something in here for everyone: westerns, murders, holiday stories, a talking cat, and even some fantasy. There are of course a number of authors for any- and everyone, including: Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, and O. Henry to name but a few.

[Dale Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this collection mostly had some of the best short stories in the English language that I can only hope to write. No collection of stories is perfect, but I liked most of them. My favorites: I'm a Fool by Sherwood Anderson, Paul's Case by Willa Cather, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, The Rich Boy by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley, To Build a Fire by Jack London, Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker. Other good stories: The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, Back for Christmas by John Collier, Old Man Minick by Edna Ferber, The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte, The Killers by Ernest Hemingway, The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs, and Champion by Ring Lardner. If you are a short story writer or want to become one, this book has the best-crafted stories in the English Language.

[Ron Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen King has named this collection among his favourite English-language short story anthologies. It features works by authors such as Max Beerbohm, Stephen Vincent Benét, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, W.W. Jacobs, Rudyard Kipling, etc., etc... While some classic stories like O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” are included, the anthology mainly offers lesser-known gems. The book is hard to find and pricey (I got mine through inter-library loan), but most of these stories can be found online for free here: https://tinyurl.com/24jpthx3.

[Karen Koppy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always loved short stories and this collection was awesome. It is a great introduction to some fabulous authors that I'd never read before. I loved Thomas Wolfe's Chickamauga, Joseph Conrad's Youth, Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, Ferber's Old Man Minick, Aldous Huxley's The Giaconda Smile, Jack London's To Build a Fire, W. Somerset Maugham's Rain, R.L. Stevenson's A Lodging for the Night, and Henry Van Dyke's The Other Wise Man. And the others were good too. There wasn't one story I didn't enjoy. Great reading from great authors!

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Far more racist fiction than I was prepared for....

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A three-way split of captivating stories, boring drivel, and racist trash.

[Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This older and out-of-print book is a collection of some of (certainly not all, but that book would be simply unmanageable) the great short stories written before the fifties. It includes some of my all-time favorite short stories, such as, "The Lady or the Tiger?" and "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". It contains stories by Robert L. Stevenson, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Wolfe, Poe, Kipling, Twain, Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, O. Henry, Huxley, Fitzgerald, and even more! It's really fabulous. Go and find a used copy. It's not terribly difficult to locate, and it's certainly worth the effort.

[Marlon Deason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I sought out this book based on Stephen King citing it as one of his favorite books of all time. There are some good stories and it is a great collection. I can see the influence they had on King's writing. That being said, not all have aged well. Despite it's fading relevance this is a great way to get acquainted with the work of several well known authors.