John Buchan

William Hope Hodgson

James S Pyke-Nott

These British Isles, moored across from mainland Europe, are more often seen as a world unto themselves. Restless and creative, they often warred amongst themselves until they began a global push to forge a World Empire of territory, of trade and of language.

Here our ambitions are only of the literary kind. These shores have mustered many masters of literature. So this anthology’s boundaries includes only those authors who were born in the British Isles - which as a geographical definition is the UK mainland and the island of Ireland - and wrote in a familiar form of English.

Whilst Daniel Defoe is the normal starting point we begin a little earlier with Aphra Behn, an equally colourful character as well as an astonishing playwright and poet. And this is how we begin to differentiate our offering; both in scope, in breadth and in depth. These islands have raised and nurtured female authors of the highest order and rank and more often than not they have been sidelined or ignored in favour of that other gender which usually gets the plaudits and the royalties.

Now authors began to offer a wider, more diverse choice from social activism and justice – and injustice to cutting stories of manners and principles. From many forms of comedy to mental meltdowns, from science fiction to unrequited heartache. If you can imagine it an author probably wrote it. 

At the end of the 19th Century bestseller lists and then prizes, such as the Nobel and Pulitzer, helped focus an audience’s attention to a books literary merit and sales worth. Previously coffeehouses, Imperial trade, unscrupulous overseas printers ignoring copyright restrictions, publishers with their book lists as an appendix and the gossip and interchange of polite society had been the main avenues to secure sales and profits. 

Track Listing of Volume 9: Scarlet Runners by James S Pyke-Nott; The Kit Bag by Algernon Blackwood;

Thurnley Abbey by Perceval Landon; Puppies and Otherwise by Evelyn Sharp; Passed by Charlotte Mew; Modern Melodrama by Hubert Crackanthorpe; The Cobweb by Saki; The Hounds of Fate by Saki; A Little Holiday by Oswald Valentine Sickert; Chopin Op 47 by Stanley Victor Makower; Fear by Catherine Wells; The Scaremongerer by Ford Maddox Ford; Pink Flannel by Ford Maddox Ford; As The Crow Flies by John Davys Beresford; The Miracle by John Davys Beresford; The Resurrection of Father Brown by G K Chesterton; Contrairy Mary by Edwin Pugh; The Death Room by Edgar Wallace; The Loathly Opposite by John Buchan; Where Was Wych Street by Stacy Aumonier; Carnacki, The Ghost Finder - No 1 - The Gateway of the Monster by William Hope Hodgson

Miniature Masterpiece

The Short Stories of the British Isles : Volume 9 - James S Pyke-Nott to William Hope Hodgson: Some of the best stories written in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales

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