The names read like a who’s who in the pantheon of American writers: Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bret Harte. Given readers’ enthusiasm for Twain’s humor, Poe’s versatility, Harte’s Westerns, and Holmes’s literary genius, it’s no surprise that someone would put their works together. That person was Alexander Jessup, who compiled over a dozen of America’s best short stories and edited them together to create The Best American Humorous Short Stories.
Along with Jessup’s introduction, the compilation includes:
THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN AND HIS WATER LOTS (1839) George Pope Morris
THE ANGEL OF THE ODD (1844) Edgar Allan Poe
THE SCHOOLMASTER'S PROGRESS (1844) Caroline M.S. Kirkland
THE WATKINSON EVENING (1846) Eliza Leslie
TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES (1854) George William Curtis
MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME (1859) Edward Everett Hale
A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS (1861) Oliver Wendell Holmes
THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY (1865) Mark Twain
ELDER BROWN'S BACKSLIDE (1885) Harry Stillwell Edwards
THE HOTEL EXPERIENCE OF MR. PINK FLUKER (1886) Richard Malcolm Johnston
THE NICE PEOPLE (1890) Henry Cuyler Bunner
THE BULLER-PODINGTON COMPACT (1897) Frank Richard Stockton
COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF (1901) Bret Harte
THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES (1902) O. Henry
BARGAIN DAY AT TUTT HOUSE (1905)
George Randolph Chester
A CALL (1906)
Grace MacGowan Cooke
HOW THE WIDOW WON THE DEACON (1911)
William James Lampton
GIDEON (1914)
Wells Hastings
This edition of The Best American Humorous Short Stories is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with pictures of Harte, Dickens, famous Westerners, and the towns of Deadwood and Tombstone in the 19th century.
