Novelists With Short Fiction in Their Jurisdiction

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Many famous authors known mostly for their novels also penned a number of short stories.

They may have started their writing careers with brief fiction, and may have continued to compose stories after turning to novels. They wrote stories for the money, to try different genres, to explore themes they felt wouldn’t work as well in the longer novel format, to take a “breather” from novels, etc.

All this came to mind last week while reading a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories. Fitzgerald is of course best known for his small canon of novels — The Great Gatsby obviously being the most famous — but he also sold about 160 pieces of short fiction to magazines during his 44-year life. Fitzgerald even used some of his stories — such as the compelling “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” about a “baby” born old who grows younger — to delve into fantasy or supernatural themes almost entirely absent from his novels.

Fitzgerald’s stories include those, such as the poignant “Babylon Revisited” and the barbed “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” with themes (spoiled/rich characters, troubled relationships, social competition, lots of drinking, etc.) reminiscent of his long fiction. Then there’s the eye-opening “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” about the world’s wealthiest family trying to keep their existence secret in a remote area of Montana. It’s a creepy/fascinating/memorable tale, unfortunately lessened by blatant racism that can’t be excused by Fitzgerald’s somewhat-satiric approach.

Leo Tolstoy, author of the classic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, also wrote some amazing short fiction — some of it just long enough to edge into novella territory. The snowy “Master and Man,” the melancholy “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” the dramatic “The Kreutzer Sonata,” the history-tinged “Hadji Murat,” etc.

Herman Melville’s main claim to fame is the iconic Moby-Dick and other novels, but he also penned memorable/wide-ranging short fiction — including the slavery saga “Benito Cereno,” the sublimely disturbing office tale “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and the droll “I and My Chimney.”

In addition to writing terrific novels such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton penned some very absorbing short stories that included a number of excellent ghost tales.

Other deceased novelists who wrote excellent short fiction include James Baldwin, Honoré de Balzac, Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, George Eliot, Graham Greene, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Jack London, Gabriel García Márquez, W. Somerset Maugham, Carson McCullers, Rabindranath Tagore, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Richard Wright, among many others.

Prominent living novelists who have successfully gone down the short-story road include Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, Lee Child, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Alice Walker, to name just a few. Lahiri hit the Pulitzer Prize jackpot with her Interpreter of Maladies story collection, which preceded her novels The Namesake and The Lowland. I love Kingsolver’s Homeland and Other Stories and Atwood’s Wilderness Tips collection. And the title tale of Atwood’s Stone Mattress collection is a gripping piece of fiction.

Of course, there are also authors who have produced novels that are basically an assemblage of related stories: Sherwood Anderson (Winesburg, Ohio), Isaac Asimov (I, Robot), Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Elizabeth Gaskell (Cranford), Amanda Moores (Grail Nights), Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge)…

Some of your favorite writers known mainly for novels but who’ve also done plenty of short stories?

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — about my town’s mixed environmental record — is here.

90 thoughts on “Novelists With Short Fiction in Their Jurisdiction”

  1. Charles Dickens certainly wrote a lot of short stories as well as skelping great novels. Then I suppose there’s also novelists who arted out writing novels, like Jean Stafford then branched into the short stories they are mainly remembered for today.

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    • Thank you for those additions, Shehanne!

      Interesting how Dickens is little remembered for his short stories amid his many classic novels. And I appreciate the mention of Jean Stafford, who I’ve never read. Just looked at a summary of her life on Wikipedia — some high highs and many low lows.

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      • Her short stories are very well written pieces. I get the feeling that she had a difficult private life, so maybe that meant fewer novels. She certainly started out ‘big’ in terms of arriving on the scene. Dickens had quite a number of short stories but as you say the novels overshadowed them. They were serialized, so maybe that is what led him to throw in the short stories, or the other way about. I must check

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        • Yes, Jean Stafford’s private life did seem difficult, from what I read. A couple of bad marriages, a bad auto accident that left her injured…

          Dickens was a master at serialization!

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  2. Good morning Dave! I’ve been up since 3:00am, and so far I’ve been making changes to my Will (ugh!) and my household budget (double ugh!). I’ve been immersing myself in classical musical — who knew that one could watch pianists or violinists in live concerts on YouTube! It’s been quite educational and fascinating to watch my favorite pieces piano concertos pieces by Rachmaninoff and Brahms by such great pianists as Helene Grimaud, Anna Federova, and violin pieces by such as Joshua Bell. I’m now actually listening to Renaissance, who I consider a semi-classical group. Does that sound right to you? As I’ve almost come around to thinking is that the best buys for my dollars are music CDs and even DVDs, that I’ve never read or watched at all.. As there are many books and DVDs I’ve read or watched twice, some more than others, but there are so many musical pieces that I can listen to over and over and never get tired of.

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    • Good morning, Kat Lit! That’s an early wake-up time. 😦

      Making changes to one’s will is no fun — but necessary, of course. My wife and I just did that this month for the first time in 15 years.

      Yes, one can find almost anything on YouTube! Glad you’ve been getting a lot of classical-music enjoyment there. And I agree that Renaissance is semi-classical. I guess their music has been described as “symphonic rock,” among other things.

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  3. As always a fascinating and inspiring read, Dave. And I always enjoy the wonderful literary discussions that develop in the comments! May I add one of my favourite novel writers, Turgenev? His stories are pure pleasure, from start to finish. Nowadays we would call them mindful. His writing is so descriptive that I can easily recall in my mind for instance the garden in Punin and Baburin, as if I have been there myself.

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      • Thank you for the recommendation, Elisabeth and Elena! All I’ve read of Turgenev is his “Fathers and Sons” novel; I now have his short stories on my list. 🙂 VERY evocative description of those stories, Elisabeth — and glad you liked the post!

        BTW, after never seeing it in my local library, I finally purchased “The Master and Margarita” a couple weeks ago. Can’t wait to start it — probably in about a month, I think, after reading a few more books.

        Elena, I’m now in the middle of J.K. Rowling’s “Lethal White” — enjoying it a LOT, and am grateful you recommended her four Robert Galbraith novels. And in my queue this month is another author you suggested: Dick Francis. I took out his “Break In.”

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  4. The Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, most famous here for “Confessions of a Mask” (and for his theatrical suicide), also wrote short stories. I’ve read a few, and found them to be oddly unsettling, as by design I suspect, in a collection of titled “Death in Midsummer.”

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  5. Dave yes you mentioned Rabindranath Tagore,
    The Poet has written numerous short stories and also Novels.
    One of the short story was expanded to a numerous award winning Movie.

    It is ” Charulata, “, the story is Broken Nest.

    Anyone interested it is here with English subtitles.You won`t be sorry if anyone decides to watch it.

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    • Thank you, bebe! I thought of you when I mentioned Tagore. I appreciate you introducing me to his amazing work. And I hope I have time to watch that movie at some point. 🙂

      BTW, “Past Tense” was at my local library when I went there Tuesday. Now almost done — about 70 pages to go. Interesting and page-turning plot, as you know, and Reacher is as great a character as ever.

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        • Finished “Past Tense” last night. I liked it a lot, bebe — very skillful weaving of the two main stories (the couple in danger and Reacher searching for his past). No love scenes but some great action/revenge sequences. And Reacher being introspective while not being TOO introspective. Very impressed with the way Lee Child comes up with one great Reacher book after another — 23 now! I also took out a collection of Reacher short stories this week, and look forward to reading that, too! Have you read his stories?

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          • Some of them , I might borrow it again !

            By the way, couple of days ago, a gentleman stooped with age with a cane, started talking. Recommended John Sanford and some others. So I mentioned to him Lee Child. He said yaa…read most including Past Tense. One 6ft 6 in giants and a Midget plays him 😆

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  6. Latest among late-bloomers (at least as measured by proximity to death– his novel’s manuscript was still making the rounds of publishers when he died), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote but little fiction– one novel, “The Leopard”, and “I Racconti” (Stories), which included “The Professor and the Siren”– a charming and fantastical tale, and so far as I know, the only short piece translated into English. Likewise unpublished in English, the author’s writings on Stendahl– which I would dearly love to read!

    In the hard-boiled department: Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M.Cain all wrote short fiction first, publishing in the pulps of the day– the most famous of these, “Black Mask”, was published by HL Mencken and George Gene Nathan, as a way to fund their literary magazine “The Smart Set.”(This last bit reminds me–Godzilla and Kurosawa both labored at Toho Films, the former making enough money for the company that they produced the latter, who directed among other masterpieces, Ran, Seven Samurai, Kagemusha, Dreams.)

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    • Thank you, jhNY, for the mention of those “hard-boiled” writers and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. I still think “The Leopard,” which you recommended to me a few years ago, is one of the best-written novels I’ve ever read. Such a shame it didn’t get published until after he died. Became one of Italy’s best-selling books ever, I believe.

      I can imagine how eager you would be to read Tomasi di Lampedusa’s take on Stendhal!

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  7. Having forwarded this week’s column to my wife at work, she replied: “Wow! How wonderful this is and how kind of him to list me in such fine company!”

    Thanks from Amanda Moores, author of “Grail Nights”, and from me.

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    • jhNY, you can tell Amanda I was very happy to deservedly include her in that paragraph. 🙂 Her terrific “Grail Nights” has a prominent place on one of my living-room bookshelves, as does her “Dream Palace” novel.

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  8. Dave, I’m going to mention a few authors whose works were essentially memoirs, but which were turned into the short story format when they were deemed moving or funny enough to be considered as such. Most specifically enough were the James Herriot novels/memoirs in which some were reissued as short story collections. Another was the tremendous output of the wonderful Gerald Durrell of “My Family and Other Animals,” whose works were considered as great however you want to classify them. Then there is the series by Alexander McCall Smith, whose works aren’t memoirs, but serialized novels. My favorite is the “44 Scotland Street” series set in Scotland. So I’m sorry to go off on a tangent about works I’ve loved, but don’t actually meet the criterion of your column.

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      • Fixed!

        Tangents, or part-tangents, are always welcome. 🙂

        Memoirs turned into short-story collections? Interesting. I had no idea, Kat Lit!

        I LOVED “My Family and Other Animals” — so quirky and funny.

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        • Dave, I’m going to mention a few authors whose works were essentially memoirs, but which were turned into the short story format when they were deemed moving or funny enough to be considered as such. Most specifically enough were the James Herriot novels/memoirs in which some were reissued as short story collections. Another was the tremendous output of the wonderful Gerald Durrell of “My Family and Other Animals,” whose works were considered as great however you want to classify them. Then there is the series by Alexander McCall Smith, whose works aren’t memoirs, but serialized novels. My favorite is the “44 Second Street” series set in Scotland. So I’m sorry to go off on a tangent about works I’ve loved, but don’t actually meet the criterion of your column.

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    • Thank you, Bill! High praise! I’ve read a couple of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s shorter fiction works, but they were novellas. I will try to sample some of the stories that grace your castle shelf. 🙂

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      • I generally watch Bill Maher’s Friday night shows, but in the last few weeks he has called adults out for liking comic books and coloring books as they are just childish and stupid. I don’t consider myself as either of these though I do enjoy them both. I’d say that eschatological sentiments are worse than anything and I don’t apologize for enjoying certain media, especially cartoons or whatever you want to call it/them.

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        • Bill Maher says dumb, elitist things at times. I think many comic books and such can be extremely interesting and intelligent. Or, at minimum, a nice break from reading or doing other things. Kat Lit, you are of course not childish or stupid!

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          • Thanks, Dave. I don’t know why I let myself get sucked into reading trash like Maher’s. Yeah, he can often be quite funny, but that doesn’t make him as being expert about another, especially anti-vaxx things. You may feel differently than I do, but I respectfully listen than wat I what you want me to do!.

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            • Maher can indeed be funny, Kat Lit, but, like you, I have mixed feelings about him. And, yes, it’s important to respect what other people like to do, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.

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              • Oh dear, I think that what I posted the last sentence as “wat” other than “what.” I’m not sure what is wrong with me that I keep making such dumb mistakes. I always took such pride in my English work, whether it be spelling, grammar or even proofreading!

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                  • Dave, thanks, but you don’t need to change that line. I realize that I make mistakes at times, but I need to stop from beating myself over the head with them and accept the new me. But I’ll just be more careful about what I post before hitting “Post Comment.” Already I’ve been having problems with doing so, but I’ll try harder in the future!

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                    • Thanks, Kat Lit. I make mistakes in comments, too, but I have the luxury of editing my own words. I wish WP allowed other people besides the blogger to edit their own comments.

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          • bebe, I don’t subscribe to HBO, but I can usually catch him on YouTube a day or two later. Along with having some very strange guests, which I’m sure he invites on to give a different perspective, e.g., Coulter and Kellyanne Conway, I think he goes over the top when he digs in about the anti-vaxxer movement, but mostly about his rather severe Islamophobia. I don’t care that he’s an atheist (as am I), but I don’t like that he needs to denigrate the religion and all of its Muslim adherents. I think this is stupid and childish at best!

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            • Kat Lit, I totally agree with what you said about Maher. (And I’m an atheist, too.)

              bebe, I also can’t stomach the vile Ann Coulter and certain other vile far-far-right-wingers. It’s fair of Maher to have some ultra-conservatives on his show, but the reactionary TV hosts in this country are usually not as fair in inviting progressives on THEIR shows. 😦

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            • Indeed…BUT no one speaks so openly critiquing trump. Oh Kellyanne Conway ? I am glad I missed that. Ann Convey and Kellyanne Conway does not know how to shut up and , speaks loudly over guests..so rude and unprofessional.

              There is a book out ” Team of Vipers”, author says Kellyanne is the biggest leakier from the WH, but trump does not care because she goes out ad defends him outside.

              Oh btw Michelle Obama`s book is still 12th no 1 in NYT list, I am reading slow about 150 pages, it is sooo good . With all the craziness out there, it will calm one down .
              But I am where they got married.

              Bad things are to come…

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  10. Howdy, Dave!

    — Some of your favorite writers . . . who’ve . . . done plenty of short stories? —

    N.B.: I believe The Novel and The Short Story have equal standing as Forms of World Literature, so I am eliding all references to the former in my answer to your question.

    Avoiding authors already mentioned by you and other members of the DAOLiterati, here’s a baker’s dozen of my favorite short-story writers, with a tasty sample in each’s display case:

    — James Blish, “A Work of Art.”
    — John Cheever, “The Five-Forty-Eight.”
    — Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer.”
    — Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace.”
    — Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery.”
    — Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist.”
    — Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
    — Dorothy Parker, “Big Blonde.”
    — Edgar Allan Poe, “The Spectacles.”
    — Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.”
    — James Thurber, “The Catbird Seat.”
    — Kurt Vonnegut Jr., “Harrison Bergeron.”
    — Eudora Welty, “Why I Live at the P.O.”

    (Meanwhile, I am going to do one of these days a mashup of my Stephen Vincent Benet’s “By the Waters of Babylon” and your F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” which, of course, shall be retitled, “By the Waters of Babylon Revisited.”)

    J.J. (Alias MugRuith1)

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    • Thank you, J.J.! You mentioned some GREAT short stories (I’ve read six of the 13 you listed). And many of that “baker’s dozen” of writers also penned novels.

      “By the Waters of Babylon Revisited” — ha ha!

      As you might have seen, I credited you in this comment area’s very first comment as one of the people who recommended I read Fitzgerald’s short stories. Very glad you did. Many of the stories are excellent, even as his frequent focus on the rich gets on one’s nerves a bit. 🙂

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      • — [M]any of that “baker’s dozen” of writers also penned novels. —

        Well, we won’t hold that against them.

        — “By the Waters of Babylon Revisited” — ha ha! —

        I already have the opening passage:

        BEGIN EXTRACT

        The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east.

        “And where’s Mr. Campbell?” Charlie asked.

        “Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell’s a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales.”

        END EXTRACT

        Fits like a glove in a hand!

        — As you might have seen, I credited you in this comment area’s very first comment as one of the people who recommended I read Fitzgerald’s short stories. —

        I noticed. Do I get a DAOLiterati T-shirt, too?

        — Very glad you did. Many of the stories are excellent, even as his frequent focus on the rich gets on one’s nerves a bit. —

        Hey! Some of my best friends are rich!

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        • J.J., I greatly enjoyed your follow-up comment — including your sublime extract from “By the Waters of Babylon Revisited.”

          DAOLiterati T-shirts come in small (for short stories) and large (for novels).

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  11. All of the authors that I’ve thought of have already been mentioned, but if I was going to be blocked for repetition, it would have happened long before now!

    After reading “Grapes of Wrath” I assumed that all Steinbeck novels would be quite lengthy, so I was surprised when I picked up a copy of “Of Mice and Men” at the library. Not quite a short story, but easily devoured in one sitting. It’s amazing that two absolutely perfect books can be produced using such a different amount of words.

    I wasn’t a fan of the length of either “War and Peace” or “Anna Karenina”, but I greatly enjoyed “Master and Man”. Thanks so much, Dave for recommending that slightly shorter story!
    Stephen King has always been a favourite writer of mine, and some of his short stories are incredibly memorable. The kind of stories that make you sleep with the light on, but somehow, you just keep going, even though you’re scaring the bejesus out of yourself!

    Oh, actually, I have read a couple of novellas that haven’t been mentioned. In an anthology of sci-fi / fantasy stories, I discovered Neil Gaiman’s Gods series, as well as some guy called George R R Martin who I think had some success with some follow up novels 🙂

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    • Thank you, Sue! Nothing wrong with repetition. 🙂

      Great point about Steinbeck! Only a few of his novels (“Grapes” and “East of Eden” among them) are long. Along with “Of Mice and Men,” short or fairly short are “The Red Pony,” “Cannery Row,” “Tortilla Flat,” etc. Steinbeck was definitely adept at both lengths.

      Hard to imagine George R.R. Martin writing short, but, as you know, he did have various works published before beginning the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. “…who I think had some success with some follow-up novels” — ha ha! 🙂

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  12. In addition to his very famous novel “Catcher in the Rye,” JD Salinger wrote a short story called “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” I think first published in 1948 or so. I read it for a college course way back in the day and it has always stuck with me. The style of the writing is so moving, and although nothing about the characters is said outright, you gather their whole story from a couple characteristics and descriptions. It’s an amazing piece, worth a read if you can get your hands on it.

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    • Thank you, M.B.! Glad you mentioned that J.D. Salinger was a short-story writer in addition to being a novelist. 🙂 I’m not the hugest fan of “The Catcher in the Rye” — mixed feelings — but found some of his shorter fiction interesting. I read the other day that some of Salinger’s unpublished work may be coming out.

      https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/jd-salingers-unseen-writings-to-be-published-family-confirms

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      • Oooooh very interesting!!! That will be fun to have a look at. I read “Catcher in the Rye” in college, and I remember not liking it as much. I definitely appreciated a lot about it, but I wouldn’t call it my favorite. I sometimes would like to read it again now that I’ve read so much more classic literature and have a better grasp on it. Sometimes that second read helps straighten some things out!

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        • M.B., I agree about the future release of those unpublished Salinger works being very interesting!

          And I hear you about how second reads can be extremely important in determining our views of certain novels. I definitely liked “Moby-Dick” and “The Scarlet Letter” — to give two examples — much better in middle age than as a teen.

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  13. I didn’t know that “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” was an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. I had read in college and saw a film in tandem that I enjoyed with Shelley Duvall.

    The esteemed journalist A.J. Liebling comes to mind. He worked as a war correspondent, to name one of his exemplary skills, during World War II, filing many stories from Africa, England, and France. I need to read more of his literary works and short stories. Liebling joined the The New Yorker magazine in 1935, after stints at the World and the World-Telegram, and he went on to contribute more than five hundred pieces before he died, in 1963

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    • Thank you, Michele! Wow — didn’t know there was a movie version of “Bernice Bobs Her Hair”! In 1976, it seems. The ending of that Fitzgerald story was every unpopular person’s wishful-thinking dream of getting revenge on a not-nice popular person.

      And I appreciate all that interesting information about A.J. Liebling, who I’ve regrettably never read.

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    • If you like Liebling (and I do), you might also enjoy Joseph Mitchell, who also wrote for the New Yorker and specialized in local color, most often of the sort one used to find way downtown by the water. “Up in the Old Hotel” is a good collection of his stuff.

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    • Thank you, Neil! Excellent mention of John Updike — a writing machine indeed!

      I heard him speak once — at a National Cartoonists Society event! He received an award for having been an amateur cartoonist before turning to fiction writing. Updike quipped (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s easier to be a novelist than a comic strip creator because a novelist has to come up with only one idea every year or two while a comic strip creator has to come up with an idea every day. 🙂

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        • True! Though I must confess to having mixed feelings about the small amount of his work (including “Rabbit, Run”) I’ve read. He seemed somewhat misogynist, or at least much better at depicting male characters than female ones. Of course, he’s far from alone in that respect, especially among famous male writers of his approximate generation.

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          • I read Updike mostly in the New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books over the years, and I liked him less than I expected to, nearly every time. But he could write, no doubt.

            Mandy rescued a batch of books from a dumpster not long ago, and among them was Trollope’s “Phineas Redux”, which until I clapped eyes on it, I had no idea was the titular antecedent of “Rabbit etc.”

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  17. Gogol is probably best known for his novel (which he called an epic poem in prose, to distinguish it from Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin) Dead Souls, but his main output was short stories. Most well known are probably The Nose and The Overcoat.

    To change genres a little, Chekhov is most well known in the West for his full-length plays, but he got his start writing short comic stories and feuillitons.

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    • Thank you, Elena, for the very relevant mentions of Gogol and Chekhov!

      “Dead Souls” is an absolutely fascinating novel, and “The Overcoat” is a tremendous/haunting story. The latter, as you know as a Russian literature expert, was lauded by Dostoyevsky for its huge impact on subsequent Russian literature.

      Your mention of Chekhov reminds me that his output had some similarities (in format more than content) to Oscar Wilde’s — i.e. plays and stories. Wilde of course also wrote “The Picture of Dorian Gray” novel.

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  18. In the crime fiction field the one that stands out is of course the quite prolific author Agatha Christie, who has written 66 novels, but also has 14 short story collections featuring mostly her detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Many of her novels have been made into full length films, but I also have quite a collection of Poirot from her short stories that were made into hour length TV episodes, starring the great actor David Suchet. I think the same treatment was also done for the Sherlock Holmes/short stories/films. Unfortunately I can’t verify that with my collections as they are out on my sunroom and it’s still quite dark out there now. Another crime writer that comes to mind is Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote stories about Montague Egg, thanks to jhNY who reminded me about this a few weeks ago.

    While technically not a short story collection, the novel “The Floating Admiral,” was written in 1931 by the Detection Club that was a collaboration of 14 well-known (at that time) mystery writers who would add a chapter to the book after each one would finish. Two of those writers doing so were Christie and Sayers.

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    • Thank you, Kat Lit! Great mentions of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers! I definitely should have included those two mystery giants, but I haven’t read short stories by either of them so they unfortunately didn’t come to mind. Christie was jaw-droppingly prolific.

      Your mention of Sherlock Holmes reminded me that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote many Holmes tales. But, with that character at least, I think of him more as a Holmes story writer rather than a Holmes novelist (he wrote four). Perhaps somewhat similar to P.G. Wodehouse with his Jeeves character, though I’m not sure of the exact stories-to-novels ratio in that case.

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      • Ah yes, she (Christie) is the best-selling author of all time, after the Bible and Shakespeare, though I wonder how many people actually read either of those books. I think we already went through in the past few weeks how few people have read the entire Bible, but I would posit that it’s the same with Shakespeare, just how many of his plays were written by others and how many did he actually write himself. I would reckon most many if not many not others did compose those.

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        • Very interesting point, Kat Lit. While the Bible and Shakespeare’s (or whoever’s) works may have sold more copies, Agatha Christie’s works might be the most thoroughly read ever. It’s painfully obvious in today’s political times how many far-right Republicans read the Bible VERY selectively, if they read it at all.

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  20. Leo Tolstoy is my fav, even Dostoevsky…Tagore again is an exceptional story teller, I need to explore Fitzgerald and Atwood’s short stories as I’ve read their novels but not short stories.

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