Arthur Conan Doyle

Joseph Conrad

Violet Hunt

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 6: The Informer by Joseph Conrad; An Edited Story by Morley Roberts; An Irish Problem by Somerville & Ross (the writing pseudonym for Edith Somerville & Violet Florence Martin); 

From the Dead by Edith Nesbit; A Rich Woman by Katharine Tynan; A Saga of the Seas by Kenneth Grahame; Mutabile Semper by Kenneth Grahame; Freckles by William Pett Ridge; The Lesson by Jerome K Jerome; The Cabman's Story. The Mysteries of a London Growler by Arthur Conan Doyle; The Striped Chest by Arthur Conan Doyle; Her Murderer by Mary Cholmondeley; The Dust of Death by Fred Merrick White; Lucy Wren by Ada Radford; A Lost Masterpiece by Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright (writing as George Egerton); The Inconsiderate Waiter by J M Barrie; The Christ of Toro by Gabriela Cunninghame Graham; Cohen of Trinity by Amy Levy; The Mezzotint by M R James; Rats by M R James; The Coach by Violet Hunt

Miniature Masterpiece

The Short Stories of the British Isles : Volume 6 - Joseph Conrad to Violet Hunt: Some of the best stories written in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales