Ephemera from a research project:
– The Best American Short Stories anthology debuted in 1915.
– Early favorites of the Best American Short Stories series included Fannie Hurst, Sherwood Anderson and Wilbur Daniel Steele.
– Wilbur Daniel Steele? (don’t google, just keep reading).
– In This Side of Paradise (1920), a character of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s says Fannie Hurst and her ilk are “not producing among ’em one story or novel that will last 10 years.”
– F. Scott’s first story in Best American was “Two for a Cent,” 1922
– In 1923, the first year Ernest Hemingway made it into Best American Short Stories, his name was spelled “Hemenway” in the table of contents.
– First appearances by others you’d expect: Willa Cather, 1929; Irvin S. Cobb, 1916; Theodore Dreiser, 1916; William Faulkner, 1931; Langston Hughes, 1934; Ring Lardner, 1922; Meridel Le Sueur, 1927; Sinclair Lewis, 1918; Dorothy Parker, 1928; Katherine Anne Porter, 1930; William Saroyan, 1935; John Steinbeck, 1938; Eudora Welty, 1938; and Thomas Wolfe, 1935.
– Louis Adamic, whose socialist chronicles of Los Angeles are now almost impossible to find, appears in the 1931 Best American Short Stories with “The Enigma.”
– Wilbur Daniel Steele appear in 8 of the anthology’s first 11 years. His 1917 bio reads with the straightforward modesty of someone whose fame preceeds him: “Born in Greensboro, NC, 1886. Educated at University of Denver. Studied are in Denver, Boston and Paris. First short story, “On Ebb Tide,” Success [magazine?], 1910. Lives in Provincetown, Mass.” These movies and TV shows were based on his work, which included these plays. When he donated his papers to Stanford, he wrote this later bio. I’m pretty sure none of his work remains in print today.
Got any questions about Best American Short Stories from 1915 to 1940? Ask now. They’re all in my living room.
