We're going to work our way through 53 of the most iconic short stories ever written. One story a week, one week at a time. No, I am not the one that created this list. Most of it comes from a list put together by LitHub.com. I have read many of them, but there are many that I will be reading for the first time as well.  This is a great chance to read from a variety of genres and periods as we dig deep and discuss what makes these masterpieces so iconic.

Stories selected for this course have largely been taken from LitHub.com from a list created by Emily Temple. (43 of the Most Iconic Short Stories in the English Language ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com) Additional selections have also been added from writersedit.com, as well as a couple of my own selections. Descriptions of the stories listed below have been copied and pasted from the two aforementioned sites. All commentary is attributed the respective authors of those lists.

Dates listed are for Mondays. Stories listed will be read and discussed during the week beginning with the Monday listed.

Sept 18: ‘The Signal-Man’ (1866)
Author: Charles Dickens Written by one of England’s greatest novelists, ‘The Signal-Man’ is an eerie ghost story about a railway signal-man who is haunted by foreboding, spectral visions.

Sept 25: “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892) "The Speckled Band" is a classic locked-room mystery that deals with the themes of parental greed, inheritance and freedom. Tinged with Gothic elements, it is considered by many to be one of Doyle's finest works, with the author himself calling it his best story.[1] 

Oct 2: ‘The Happy Prince’(1888)
Author: Oscar Wilde Year: 1888‘The Happy Prince’ is a melancholy tale, reflecting the style of a fairy-tale or fable – which is, after all, where short stories found their roots as a genre.The story looks at themes of love and sacrifice, wealth and poverty, and the nature of true beauty.

Oct 9: ‘The Magic Shop’ (1903)
Author: H.G. Wells ‘The Magic Shop’ is a curious tale that follows a father and son’s experience of visiting a ‘genuine magic shop’.While the little boy explores the shop, seeing only joy and wonder, his father is confronted with much more sinister visions. The story therefore examines how we experience the world as children versus how we experience the world as adults. In doing so, ‘The Magic Shop’ forces the reader to consider whether innocence and evil truly exist in the outer world, or whether these are merely determined by our own perceptions.

Oct 16: ‘Désirée’s Baby’ (1893)
Author: Kate Chopin Set in Louisiana, prior to the American Civil War (a time when slavery was still considered ‘lawful’), ‘Désirée’s Baby’ examines the injustices of racism and gender discrimination.

 Oct 23: ‘The Body Snatcher’ (1884)
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson Inspired by the Burke and Hare murders of 1828, ‘The Body Snatcher’ is a Gothic tale that follows two med students, involved in crimes of grave robbing, in order to keep their anatomy professor supplied with instructional cadavers.

 Oct 30: ‘B24’ (1899)
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Anyone who has heard the name Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would know he is most famous for his hugely popular Sherlock Holmes stories. But perhaps not everyone realises what a talented and prolific writer he truly was – particularly in the genre of the short story. But for anyone who has ever wondered what this author can do outside of the Holmes stories, ‘B24’ is excellent in highlighting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a master of the short story.

Nov 6: "Harrison Bergeron" Kurt Vonnegut (1961) A satirical dystopian science-fiction short story. In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. 

Nov 13:"Specialty of the House" Stanley Ellin (1948) a short story about Mr. Laffler inviting Mr. Costain to a private club for dinner, where the house specialty, a lamb dish, is not being served. 

Nov 27: "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" Mark Twain (1865) the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley.

Dec 4: “Notes from Underground,” is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The novella presents itself as an excerpt from the memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

Dec 11: “The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor” Agatha Christie (1923)
Poirot is asked by a friend, who is the director of the Northern Union Insurance Company, to investigate the case of a middle-aged man who died of an internal haemorrhage just a few weeks after insuring his life for fifty thousand pounds.

Dec 18: Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) 
After falling asleep in the woods, the ‘henpecked’ Rip Van Winkle awakes to find his village deeply changed, and is startled to discover twenty years have passed.

Jan 8: Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)
Poe’s early stream-of-consciousness horror story, unreliable narrator and heart beating under the floorboards and all, is certainly one of the most adapted—and even more often referenced—short stories in popular culture, and which may or may not be the source for all of the hundreds of stories in which a character is tormented by a sound only they can hear. (Still not quite as ubiquitous as Poe himself, though . . .)

Jan 15: Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853)
Once, while I was walking in Brooklyn, carrying my Bartleby tote bag, a woman in an SUV pulled over (on Atlantic Avenue, folks) to excitedly wave at me and yell “Melville! That’s Melville!” Which is all you really need to know about that.

Jan 22: Ambrose Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890)
I will leave it to Kurt Vonnegut, who famously wrote, “I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce. It isn’t remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like “Sophisticated Lady” by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.”

Jan 29: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
Odds are this was the first overtly Feminist text you ever read, at least if you’re of a certain age; it’s become a stand-in for the idea of women being driven insane by the patriarchy—and being ignored by doctors, who deem them “hysterical.” This is another one with lots of adaptations to its name, including a memorable episode of The Twilight Zone, which concludes: “Next time you’re alone, look quickly at the wallpaper, and the ceiling, and the cracks on the sidewalk. Look for the patterns and lines and faces on the wall. Look, if you can, for Sharon Miles, visible only out of the corner of your eye or… in the Twilight Zone.”

Feb 5: Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898)
Technically a novella, but discussed enough as a story that I’ll include it here (same goes for a couple of others on this list, including “The Metamorphosis”). It has, as a work of literature, inspired a seemingly endless amount of speculation, criticism, unpacking, and stance-taking. “In comment after comment, article after article, the evidence has been sifted through and judgments delivered,” Brad Leithauser wrote in The New Yorker. Fine, intelligent readers have confirmed the validity of the ghosts (Truman Capote); equally fine and intelligent readers have thunderously established the governess’s madness (Edmund Wilson).” And nothing that inspires so much interpretive interest could escape the many interpretations into other media: films, episodes of television, and much other literature.

Feb 12: Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Toy Dog” (1899)
Widely acknowledged as one of Chekhov’s best stories, if not the best, and therefore almost no students get through their years at school without reading it. Has been adapted as a film, a ballet, a play, a musical, and most importantly, a Joyce Carol Oates short story.

Feb 19: W.W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902)
So iconic—be careful what you wish for, is the gist—that you probably didn’t even know it started out as a short story. 

Feb 26: O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905)
According to Wikipedia, there have been 17 different film adaptations of O. Henry’s classic short story about a couple’s thwarted Christmas; the essential format—Della sells her hair to buy Jim a watch chain; Jim sells his watch to buy Della a set of combs—has been referenced and replicated countless times beyond that. I even heard Dax Shepard refer to this story on his podcast the other day, and so I rest my case.

March 4: James Joyce, “The Dead” (1914)
The last story in Joyce’s collection Dubliners and one of the best short stories ever written; just ask anyone who wanted to have read some Joyce but couldn’t crack Ulysses. (Or anyone who could crack Ulysses too.) And let’s not forget the John Huston movie starring Anjelica Huston as Gretta.


March 11: Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game” aka “The Hounds of Zaroff” (1924)
“The most popular short story ever written in English” is obviously the one about aristocrats hunting people. Widely adapted, but one of my favorite versions is the episode of Dollhouse in which a Richard Connell (no relation except the obvious) hunts Echo with a bow.

March18: Ernest Hemingway, “The Killers” (1927)
I was tempted to include “Hills Like White Elephants” because of the number of people forced to read it to learn about dialogue (happily, there are other options), but “The Killers,” while less often anthologized, is more influential overall, and gave us not only two full length film adaptations and a Tarkovsky short but Tobias Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain,” which I do think is a very good story to learn from, if not for dialogue, then for story-making.

March 25: Zora Neale Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits” (1933)
Hurston is most famous for Their Eyes Were Watching God, but those who know will tell you that this story of love, marriage, betrayal, and love again—which was also made into a 2001 film—is a classic, too.

April 8: Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery” (1948)
The short story that launched a thousand letters to The New Yorker—or if not a thousand, then at least “a torrent . . . the most mail the magazine had ever received in response to a work of fiction.” Still taught widely in schools, and still chilling.

April 15: J. D. Salinger, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948)
The very first story to destroy many a young mind. In a good way, obviously.

April 22:Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950)
Bradbury’s work has thoroughly permeated pop culture; plenty of his stories are widely adapted and referenced, so I could have chosen a few others here (“The Veldt” is my personal favorite). But every year, the image of a smart house going on long after the death of its occupants becomes more chilling and relevant an image; we can’t help but keep going back to it.

April 29: Daphne du Maurier, “The Birds” (1952)
I know it’s really the Hitchcock film adaptation that’s iconic, but you wouldn’t have the Hitchcock without the du Maurier.

May 6: Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953)
Another oft-assigned (and oft-argued-over) story, this one with so many title rip-offs.

May 13: Elmore Leonard, “Three-Ten to Yuma” (1953)
I know, I know, it’s “Fire in the Hole” that gave us Justified, and we’re all so very glad. But “Three-Ten to Yuma” has more name recognition—after all, it was adapted into two separate and very good films, the former of which (1957) actually created contemporary slang: in Cuba, Americans are called yumas and the United States is La Yuma.

May 20: Philip K. Dick, “The Minority Report” (1956)
As a whole, Philip K. Dick’s work has had massive influence on literature, film, pop culture, and our cultural attitudes toward technology. Most of his best-known works are novels, but when a short story gets made into a Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise film, you’re basically assuring iconic status right there. (Or at least that’s how it used to work…)

May 27: James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)
Baldwin’s best known short story pops up in plenty of anthologies, and can be thanked for being the gateway drug for many budding Baldwin acolytes.
Alan Sillitoe, “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959)
Not only is the story itself widely known and read—just ask Rod Blagojevich (remember him?)—that title has been rewritten and reused thousands of times for varying ends—just ask the reporter who wrote that piece about Blagojevich. Or Adrian Tomine.

June 3: John Cheever, “The Swimmer” (1964)
Cheever’s most famous story nails something essential about the mid-century American sensibility, and particularly the mid-century American suburbs, which is probably why everyone knows it (it’s also frequently anthologized). Or maybe it’s more about Burt Lancaster’s little shorts? Either way.

June 10: Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966)
Another frequently anthologized and unwaveringly excellent short story; and look, it’s no one’s fault that Laura Dern turns everything she touches iconic.

June 17: Toni Cade Bambara, “The Lesson” (1972)
Yet another story often assigned in schools (the good ones, anyway), which hopefully means one day we’ll wake up and find out that everyone has read it.

June 24: Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973)
As others have pointed out before me, Le Guin’s most read and most famous short story is almost always chillingly relevant.

July 1: Donald Barthelme, “The School” (1974)
This one might only be iconic for writers, but considering it’s one of the best short stories ever written (according to me), I simply couldn’t exclude it.

July 8: Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1978)
Another staple of a writer’s education, and a reader’s; “are you really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” being a kind of bandied-about shibboleth.

July 15: Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981)
I struggled choosing a Carver story for this list—”Cathedral” is more important, and probably more read, but “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” has transcended its own form more completely, at least with its title, which has spawned a host of echoes, including Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, to the point that I think it’s recognizable to just about everyone. A quick Google search will reveal that the framing has been used for almost everything you can think of. There’s—and I kid you not—a What We Talk About When We Talk About Books/War/Sex/God/The Tube/Games/Rape/Money/Creative Writing/Nanoclusters/Hebrew/The Weather/Defunding the Police/Free Speech/Taxes/Holes/Climate/The Moon/Waste/Cancel Culture/Impeachment/Gender/Digital Inclusions/Exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease/COVID-19. You see what I’m getting at here.

July 22: Stephen King, “The Body” (1982)
Otherwise known, to the general public, as Stand By Me.

July 29: Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” (1983)
Want to feel bad about your writing? This was the first short story Amy Hempel ever wrote.

Aug 5: Lorrie Moore, “How to Be an Other Woman” (1985)
A very very good short story that has given rise to so many bad ones.

Aug 12: Mary Gaitskill, “Secretary” (1988)
Bad Behavior is iconic as a whole, but probably the story to have most acutely permeated the wider culture is “Secretary,” on account of the film adaptation starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader—despite the fact that it totally butchers the ending.

Aug 19: Amy Tan, “Rules of the Game” (1989)
This story originally appeared in The Joy Luck Club, Tan’s mega-bestseller, so probably almost everyone you know has read it. The film version didn’t hurt either.

Aug 26: Denis Johnson, “Emergency” (1992)
When I left New York to go get my MFA, a friend gave me a copy of Jesus’ Son with the inscription “Because everyone in your MFA will talk about it and you don’t want to be the girl who hasn’t read it. (It’s also really good).” He was not wrong.

Sept 2: Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” (1997)
Everybody knows this story—even if they only know it from its (massively successful and influential, not to mention the true Best Picture Winner of 2006) film adaptation—and not for nothing, coming out when it did, it went a long way towards making some Americans more comfortable with homosexuality. Open the floodgates, baby.

Sept 9: Jhumpa Lahiri, “A Temporary Matter” (1998)
The story that made Lahiri a household name.

Sept 16: Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life” (1998)
Otherwise known as Arrival. (Also technically a novella.)

Sept 23: Alice Munro, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (2001)
At this point, almost everyone has read at least some Alice Munro, right? This story is one of the best from one of the greats, and was also adapted into a fantastic but heartbreaking film, Away From Her.

Sept 30: Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (2017)
Sure, it’s recent, so it’s not quite as ingrained as some of the others here, but it’s also the story that broke the internet—and quite possibly the only New Yorker story that thousands of people have ever read.