The Best American Short Stories 1944 is a volume in The Best American Short Stories series edited by Martha Foley. The volume was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Background The series is considered one of the "best-known annual anthologies of short fiction""Short and Sweet" by Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly, 11/05/99, issue 511, page 73. and has anthologized more than 2,000 short stories, including works by some of the most famous writers in contemporary American literature."The Best American Short Stories of the Century," Publishers Weekly, 3/8/1999, volume 246, issue 10, page 47.
In particular, the Willa Cather Review wrote that The Best American Short Stories series "became a repository of values" for creative writing programs, college libraries, and literary magazines."'Long-Cellared Wine': 'Double Birthday,' Edward J. H. O'Brien, and the Best American Short Stories Series" by Timothy W. Bintrim and Scott Riner, Willa Cather Review, spring 2023, volume 64, issue 1, page 18. The Los Angeles Times, reflecting on the hundred-year anniversary of the series, noted that it eventually became an "institution" itself, often being taught in classrooms.
Short stories included AuthorStorySourceSidney A. Alexander"The White Boat"AccentWilliam E. Barrett"Señor Payroll"Southwest ReviewSaul Bellow"Notes of a Dangling Man"Partisan ReviewDorothy Canfield"The Knot Hole"Yale ReviewElizabeth Eastman"Like a Field Mouse over the Heart"Harper's BazaarHelen Eustis"The Good Days and the Bad"StoryWilliam Fifield"The Fishermen of Patzcuaro"StoryBerry Fleming"Strike Up a Stirring Music"Yale ReviewHazel Hawthorne"More like a Coffin"The New YorkerNoel Houston"A Local Skirmish"The New YorkerShirley Jackson"Come Dance with Me in Ireland"The New YorkerJosephine W. Johnson"The Rented Room"Harper's BazaarH. J. Kaplan"The Mohammedans"Partisan ReviewEyre De Lanux"The S.S. Libertad"TomorrowWilliam March"The Female of the Fruit Fly"MademoiselleCarson McCullers"The Ballad of the Sad Café"Harper's BazaarAstrid Meighan"Shoe the Horse and Shoe the Mare"The New YorkerMary Mian"Exiles from the Creuse"The New YorkerEdita Morris"Heart of Marzipan"MademoiselleVladimir Nabokov"'That in Aleppo Once. . .'"Atlantic MonthlyRuth Portugal"Neither Here nor There"Harper's BazaarJ. F. Powers"Lions, Harts, Leaping Does"AccentGladys Schmitt"All Souls'"Collier'sIrwin Shaw"The Veterans Reflect"AccentGeorge Stiles"A Return"Kenyon ReviewLeon Z. Surmelian"My Russian Cap"The New Mexico Quarterly ReviewLionel Trilling"Of This Time, of That Place"Partisan ReviewElizabeth Warner"An Afternoon"The New YorkerJessamyn West"The Illumination"Harper's BazaarEmmanuel Winters"God's Agents Have Beards"Harper's Bazaar
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