The Best American Humorous Short Stories

The names read like a who’s who in the pantheon of American writers: Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Bret Harte. Given readers’ enthusiasm for Twain’s humor, Poe’s versatility, Harte’s Westerns, and Holmes’s literary genius, it’s no surprise that someone would put their works together. That person was Alexander Jessup, who compiled over a dozen of America’s best short stories and edited them together to create The Best American Humorous Short Stories.

Along with Jessup’s introduction, the compilation includes: 

THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN AND HIS WATER LOTS (1839) George Pope Morris

THE ANGEL OF THE ODD (1844) Edgar Allan Poe

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S PROGRESS (1844) Caroline M.S. Kirkland

THE WATKINSON EVENING (1846) Eliza Leslie

TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES (1854) George William Curtis

MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME (1859) Edward Everett Hale

A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS (1861) Oliver Wendell Holmes

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY (1865) Mark Twain

ELDER BROWN'S BACKSLIDE (1885) Harry Stillwell Edwards

THE HOTEL EXPERIENCE OF MR. PINK FLUKER (1886) Richard Malcolm Johnston

THE NICE PEOPLE (1890) Henry Cuyler Bunner

THE BULLER-PODINGTON COMPACT (1897) Frank Richard Stockton

COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF (1901) Bret Harte

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES (1902) O. Henry

BARGAIN DAY AT TUTT HOUSE (1905)

  George Randolph Chester

A CALL (1906)

  Grace MacGowan Cooke

HOW THE WIDOW WON THE DEACON (1911)

  William James Lampton

GIDEON (1914)

  Wells Hastings

 This edition of The Best American Humorous Short Stories is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and is illustrated with pictures of Harte, Dickens, famous Westerners, and the towns of Deadwood and Tombstone in the 19th century.