The Top 10 Short Stories - Sadness: The ten best short stories of all time about sadness

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.
In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume our author’s pens turn to tales of sadness. This distressing feeling can arrive at a moment’s notice or gradually build and overwhelm. Within these stories Anton Chekhov, Sherwood Anderson, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Katherine Mansfield and many others explore and reveal the consequences.

1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Sadness - An Introduction

2 - Odour of Chrysanthemums by D H Lawrence

3 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat'

4 - Life of Ma Parker by Katherine Mansfield

5 - Paul's Case by Willa Cather

6 - Silence by Leonid Andreyev

7 - The Stones of the Village by Alice Dunbar Nelson

8 - Hide And Seek or Pliatki by Fyodor Sologub

9 - Hands by Sherwood Anderson

10 - Vanka by Anton Chekhov

11 - A Dark Brown Dog by Stephen Crane