The Best American Humorous Short Stories
By George Pope Morris, Eliza Leslie, George William Curtis, Edward Everett Hale, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Frank Richard Stockton, Bret Harte, O. Henry, George Randolph Chester, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Wells Hastings, William James Lampton, Henry Cuyler Bunner, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Harry Stillwell Edwards, Caroline Matilda Kirkland & Edgar Allan Poe
- Release Date: 2012-07-24
- Genre: Short Stories
In view of the necessary limitations as to the volume's size, I could not hope to represent all periods of American literature adequately, nor was this necessary in order to give examples of the best that has been done in the short story in a humorous vein in American literature. Probably all types of the short story of humor are included here, at any rate. Not only copyright restrictions but in a measure my own opinion have combined to exclude anything by Joel Chandler Harris – Uncle Remus – from the collection. Harris is primarily – in his best work – a humorist, and only secondarily a short story writer. As a humorist he is of the first rank; as a writer of short stories his place is hardly so high. His humor is not mere funniness and diversion; he is a humorist in the fundamental and large sense, as are Cervantes, Rabelais, and Mark Twain.
