Barnes & Noble

It's a very nice book physically, and the story selection includes almost all of the 'frequently anthologized' public domain american stories in one place, so it's convenient in that way. The only missing stories I can think of off the top of my head are Benet's "Devil and Daniel Webster" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", plus the omission of anything at all from Ernest Hemmingway or Ray Bradbury. No Hemmingway loses it a star. Both "The Killers" and "Hills like White Elephants" should really be in here to make it complete. Weirdly the Henry James selection does not include "The Turn of the Screw", but since that story is, well, really insanely boring and it's baffling how frequently it gets included in anthologies in the first place, no points lost.

Because Barnes & Noble for some stupid reason insists on not including a table of contents for their anthologies on their website, here's the contents:

WASHINGTON IRVING
Rip Van Winkle
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Young Goodman Brown
The Minister's Black Veil
The May-Pole of Merry Mount

EDGAR ALLAN POE
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Masque of the Red Death
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Purloined Letter

HERMAN MELVILLE
Bartleby the Scrivener

EDWARD EVERETT HALE
The Man Without a Country

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
My Contraband (AKA The Brothers)

FRANK R. STOCKTON
The Lady, or the Tiger?

MARK TWAIN
The Celebrated Jumping-Frog of Calaveras County
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

BRET HARTE
The Luck of Roaring Camp
The Outcasts of Poker Flat

AMBROSE BIERCE
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot

HENRY JAMES
The Aspern Papers
The Beast in the Jungle

GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE
'Sieur George

SARAH ORNE JEWETT
A White Heron
The Failure of David Berry

KATE CHOPIN
Desiree's Baby
Athenaise

MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
The Revolt of "Mother"
A New England Nun

CHARLES W. CHESNUTT
The Wife of His Youth

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
The Yellow Wall-Paper

HAMLIN GARLAND
Up the Cooly

EDITH WHARTON
The Other Two
Autre Temps

O. HENRY
The Gift of the Magic
A Retrieved Reformation
The Ransom of Red Chief

STEPHEN CRANE
The Open Boat
The Blue Hotel
The Bridge Comes to Yellow Sky

JACK LONDON
To Build a Fire

WILLA CATHER
Paul's Case
The Sculptor's Funeral

RING LARDNER
Alibi Ike

SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Sophistication
The Egg

H.P. LOVECRAFT
The Outsider
The Colour Out of Space

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz
Winter Dreams… (mehr)

Urania's Mirror; or, a view of the Heavens is the 1824 book that accompanies a set of thirty-two cards of the constellations visible in Great Britain. The early promotional material and the book itself attribute the illustrations to "A Lady," though they were based on Alexander Jamieson's A Celestial Atlas. These particular illustrations were engraved by Sidney Hall, though they were later identified as the work of Reverend Richard Rouse Bloxam. The author of the book forecasts the future of astronomy when he writes, "We find ourselves surrounded by thousands and thousands of suns, multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, invariably keeping the paths prescribed them. Reasoning by analogy, we are authorized in concluding that these worlds are peopled with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression toward perfection and felicity" (pg. 6). The descriptions of the constellations are written to accompany the cards and include information about the stars themselves and the fable of the constellation. This book from Barnes & Noble reproduces the 1832 first American edition of the book and accompanies a set of the cards in a box set titled "Night Sky: A View of the Heavens."… (mehr)