William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name of O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and spent the most productive and creative period of his writing career in the ensuing years while living at 55 Irving Place, less than two-hundred feet from the front door of Pete’s Tavern. It was...

"Extracts from Adam's Diary, translated from the original ms. by Mark Twain" is a humorous fictional narrative written in the late 19th century. The book takes the form of a diary and offers a satirical retelling of the biblical story of Adam and Eve, focusing on Adam's perspective as he...

After the death of their parents, four young women attempt to please their only living relative – an ornery, hard-to-love aunt with a well cooked, tasty Thanksgiving meal. Will they be able to pull it off? Laura, Kate, Margaret, and Agnes are sisters, who narrates the tale. Each girl has her...

The New York woman can hardly have a single desire that cannot be gratified through some bureau or agency of this town. Through them she can get a house, have it furnished, secure new wardrobe, a good form, a clear complexion, the latest shade of hair, and a loan to start the wheels of...

Please, God, let him telephone me now. Dear God, let him call me now. I won't ask anything else of You, truly I won't. It isn't very much to ask. It would be so little to You, God, such a little, little thing. Only let him telephone now. Please, God. Please, please, please. If I didn't think...

The History of England is a 1791 work by Jane Austen, written when she was just fifteen. This is a comic tour de force that shows Austen's wit developing into the satirical prowess she is remembered for. ...

Who knew Zelda Fitzgerald wrote stories before Scott entered her life? In 1918, Zelda Sayre, later Zelda Fitzgerald, won a prize for this story, which she published in the Sidney Lanier High School Literary Journal. She was seventeen or eighteen years old when she wrote it; she would soon meet...

Considered the Grande Dame of American letters, Edith Wharton wrote 40 books in 40 years, including The Age of Innocence, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, thus becoming the first woman to do so. In 1904, a magazine commissioned Wharton to write a series of articles about...

“And so,” the story writers used to say, “they lived happily ever after.” Um-m-m—maybe. After the glamour had worn off, and the glass slippers were worn out, did the Prince never find Cinderella’s manner redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never necessary that he remind her to be more...

The story was written on April 19, 1894, and first published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, under the title “The Dream of an Hour,” one of nineteen Kate Chopin stories that Vogue published. “In the mid - to late 1890s, Vogue was the place where Chopin published her most daring and...