O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
673K words
Chapters
68

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Urban LifePortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsComplex HumanityNarrative TechniqueLiterary PrizeLiterary AnthologyShort StoriesSocial ObservationAmerican Literature

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 by Elizabeth Alexander et al.Author: ,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 is an anthology centered on the prizewinning short stories of the 1921 O. Henry Memorial Award, offering a representative view of American short fiction in its handling of story structure, irony, and endings. As an early gathering of classic short stories, its value lies not only in the individual pieces but in letting readers observe the shared tastes and stylistic shifts of short fiction in the same period. The pieces suit fragmented reading while leaving something to linger over at each ending, making the book suitable for readers who want to understand the American short-story tradition, sharpen their sense of narrative pacing, or find writing inspiration in a classic anthology. Because the edition described was provided by Project Gutenberg, the electronic text is especially convenient for searching, collecting, and comparative reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read through the stories first and note the endings you admire most, then compare how each achieves its twist
  2. Read one story closely at a time, breaking it into opening, conflict, turn, and resolution
  3. Watch for contrasts between characters' speech and the narrative tone
  4. Compare favorite stories with familiar mystery or emotional fiction

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68

FAQ

How should this book be positioned? It is a classic anthology built around the prizewinning stories of the 1921 O. Henry Memorial Award, suited to understanding the narrative pleasures of American short fiction and to training in story structure.
What deserves the most attention while reading? Focus on how the stories organize their threads, build surprise, and leave an aftertaste at the end. The differences in conception between stories also help readers develop a clearer sense of genre.
Why does it suit fragmented reading? Short stories are easy to read in segments, whether on a commute, at lunch, or before bed; after several in a row, shared stylistic features of the period begin to emerge.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.