BBC Classics: Ultimate Story Collection

by Louisa May Alcott, Hans Christian Andersen, Honoré de Balzac

A treasure chest of timeless short stories by some of the world's greatest authors.

Suspense and horror
1 'The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire' - Arthur Conan Doyle
2 'The Signalman' - Charles Dickens
3 'Lost Hearts' - MR James
4 'The Sealed Room' - Arthur Conan Doyle.
5 'Mrs Badgery' - Wilkie Collins
6 'Wailing Well' - MR James
7 'The Open Window' - Saki
8 'How it happened' - Arthur Conan Doyle
9 'The Tell-Tale Heart' - Edgar Allan Poe
10 'The Cone' - HG Wells
11 'A Haunted House' - Virginia Woolf
12 'Rats' - MR James
13 'The Oval Portrait' - Edgar Allan Poe
14 'Tarquin of Cheapside' - F. Scott Fitzgerald
15 'One Crowded Hour' - Arthur Conan Doyle
16 'The Mezzotint' - MR James
17 'The Masque of the Red Death' - Edgar Allan Poe

Love
18 'The Kiss' - Kate Chopin
19 'Eleonora' - Edgar Allan Poe
20 'About Love' - Anton Chekhov
21 'The Lovers' - Hans Christian Anderson
22 'Love' - Guy De Maupassant
23 'The Sphinx Without a Secret' - Oscar Wilde
24 'A Wedding Gift' - Guy De Maupassant
25 'Kew Gardens' - Virginia Woolf
26 'The District Doctor' - Ivan Turgenev
27 'Happiness' - Guy De Maupassant
28 'A Blunder' - Anton Chekhov
29 'The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky' - Stephen Crane
30 'In a Far-Off World' - Olive Schreiner
31 'The Cook's Wedding' - Anton Chekhov
32 'The Recruit' - Honore de Balzac
33 'The Nightingale and the Rose' - Oscar Wilde
34 'Pyramus and Thisbe' - Ovid
35 'Aunt Hetty on Matrimony' - Fanny Fern
36 'A Country Cottage' - Anton Chekhov
37 'Marriage a la Mode' - Katherine Mansfield
38 'The Statue of Limitations' - Ernest Dowson
39 'The Dilettante' - Edith Wharton

Humorous
40 'Tobermory' - Saki
41 'The Mesmeric Mountain' - Stephen Crane
42 'The Children's Joke' - Louisa May Alcott
43 'At The Siren' - Anton Chekhov
44 'The Garden Party' - Katherine Mansfield
45 'The Cask of Amontillado' - Edgar Allan Poe
46 'The New Dress' - Virginia Woolf
47 'How I Built Myself A House' - Thomas Hardy
48 'The Model Millionaire' - Oscar Wilde
49 'A Pair of Silk Stockings' - Kate Chopin
50 'At The Barbers' - Anton Chekhov
51 'A Respectable Woman' - Kate Chopin

Folk & Fable
52 'The Happy Prince' - Oscar Wilde.
53 'The Elves and the Shoemaker' - The Brothers Grimm
54 'The Emperor's New Clothes' - Hans Christian Andersen
55 'The Tongue Cut Sparrow' - Yei Theodora Ozaki
56 'Finn and the Scottish Giant' - Harold F. Read
57 'The Postmaster' - Rabindranath Tagore
58 'The Toys of Peace' - Saki
59 'The Selfish Giant' - Oscar Wilde
60 'The Flower Gatherer' - Edward Thomas
61 'Araby' - James Joyce
62 'The Interlopers' - Saki
63 'Tom Thumb' - The Brothers Grimm
64 'The Kabuliwalah' - Rabindranath Tagore
65 'The Monkey's Paws' - WW Jacobs

Christmas
66 'The Little Match Girl' - Hans Christian Andersen
67 'Papa Panov's Special Christmas' - Leo Tolstoy
68 'Christmas Storms and Sunshine' - Elizabeth Gaskell.
69 'The Gift of the Magi' - O'Henry
70 'At Christmas Time '- Anton Chekhov
71 'A Dill Pickle' - Katherine Mansfield

Classic Tales
72 'The Yellow Wallpaper' - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
73 'The Fall of Lord Barrymore' - Arthur Conan Doyle
74 'The Necklace' - Guy De Maupassant
75 'Holiday Group' - EM Delafield
76 'Three Questions' - Leo Tolstoy
77 'The Cop and the Anthem' - O'Henry
78 'The Fly' - Katherine Mansfield
79 'The Christening' - DH Lawrence
80 'After the Race' - James Joyce
81 'The String Quartet' - Virginia Woolf
82 'Two Friends' - Guy De Maupassant
83 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' - Ambrose Bierce.
84 'A Gentleman Friend' - Anthon Chekhov
85 'Ma'ame Pelagie' - Kate Chopin
86 'Second Best' - DH Lawrence
87 'El Verdugo' - Honore de Balzac
88 'The Story of an Hour' - Kate Chopin
89 'The Man of No Account' - Bret Hart
90 'The Piece of String' - Guy De Maupassant

Genres: Audiobook

26 pages, Audible Audio

First published March 6, 2021

About the author

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Good Wives (1869), Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many well-known intellectuals of the day, including Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used pen names such as A.M. Barnard, under which she wrote lurid short stories and sensation novels for adults that focused on passion and revenge.
Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still popular today among both children and adults. It has been adapted for stage plays, films, and television many times.
Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She also spent her life active in reform movements such as temperance and women's suffrage. She died from a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888, just two days after her father's death.

Reviews

[C L · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a year and a half of agony, I can confidently say: short stories are not for me.

Some were honestly great, though I couldn’t tell you which, since I’ve worked hard to clear my memory and make space for more insta reels. (The only short form content I can digest, seemingly).

Maybe the short story format packs too much of an emotional punch for me, without the necessary wind down and happy endings I need to recover.

It’s all matchstick girls dying in the snow. (x90)

Even in the love stories and humor sections.

Also the scary stories were not good for me.

So unless you love short stories, I wouldn’t bother.

(BUT! A good way of discovering new authors, especially women!)

[The Bauchler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful as an author ‘taster’.

I cherrypicked this collection using it to introduce me to writers I’d not read before or had read and wanted to try more.

There were also a few old favourites I listened to again.

There’s something in here for everyone. The book helpfully groups the stories by theme, horror, Love etc.

The readers were mostly very good, the production was so-so.

[Aditya Mallya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good assortment of classic short stories across genres.

[Sebastiano Gualtieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice selection. Maupassant is the best. Such a simple, solid, and yet surprising prose. “Love” was probably my favourite story in this collection.

[Nomad nimrod · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very very average tales.
I wouldn't recommend it.