Classic Short Stories by Famous Authors
Sure, classic books are great, but have you ever considered how many classic short stories you’ve been missing out on? And the upside of reading classic short stories is that it won’t take as long as reading a classic book, and you can remedy your lacking cultural knowledge in just a few minutes.
Short stories can be great for getting to know a famous author before you dive into their work head-first. Think of them as samples that will guide you into their larger body of work. I have selected a few good short stories by famous authors so you can get started.
Oh! Also, as I was researching short stories for this post, the website Open Culture kept coming up. It seems they keep tabs on free media across the internet, how useful!
Virginia Woolf short stories
A Haunted House [read it for free here]
The New Dress [read it for free here]
Kew Gardens [read it for free here]
Also, the book The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf comes with scores of Woolf’s shorter works, as well as Mrs Dalloway’s Party, which was the beginning of Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway.
Stephen King short stories
Strawberry Spring [read it for free here]
Graveyard Shift [read it for free here]
The Woman in the Room [read it for free here]
The Jaunt [read it for free here]
The House on Maple Street [read it for free here]
(More Stephen King short stories here.)
Haruki Murakami Short Stories
Kino [read it for free here]
Scheherazade [read it for free here]
Samsa in Love [read it for free here]
Yesterday [read it for free here]
Town of Cats [read it for free here]
Toni Morrison Short Stories
Sweetness [read it for free here]
Recitatif [read it for free here]
James Baldwin Short Stories
Sonny’s Blues [read it for free here]
Going to Meet the Man [read it for free here]
Previous Condition [read it for free here]
George Orwell Short Stories
Shooting an Elephant [read it for free here]
Margaret Atwood Short Stories
Stone Mattress [read it for free here]
Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood [read it for free here]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Short Stories
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings [read it for free here]
Death Constant Beyond Love [read it for free here]
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World [read it for free here]
The Autumn of the Patriarch [read it for free here]
The Challenge [read it for free here]
One of These Days [read it for free here]
F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Stories
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald [read it for free here]
Two Wrongs [read it for free here]
The Rich Boy [read it for free here]
And, here’s a link to a free online collection of 54 F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories.
Octavia Butler Short Stories
Bloodchild [read it for free here]
The Evening and the Morning and the Night [read it for free here]
Isabel Allende Short Stories
Two Words [read it for free here]
Sandra Cisneros Short Stories
Eleven by Sandra Cisneros [read it for free here]
Neil Gaiman Short Stories
Bitter Grounds [read it for free here]
Cinnamon [read it for free here]
Down to a Sunless Sea [read it for free here]
How To Talk To Girls At Parties [read it for free here]
If you enjoyed this post and you like short stories, please consider taking a look at this round-up of short stories collections—maybe you’ll find something you like outside the realm of free media!
