_Honoré de Balzac_, _Eugène Scribe_, _Alfred de Vigny_, _Victor Hugo_, _Alexandre Dumas_, _Prosper Mérimée_, _Jules Janin_, _George Sand_, _Alfred de Musset_, _Théophile Gautier_, _Octave Feuillet_, _Alexandre Dumas (Fils)_, _Erckmann-Chatrian_, _Alphonse Daudet_, _André Theuriet_, _Ludovic Halévy_, _Émile Gaboriau_, _Émile Zola_, _Jules Claretie_, _François Coppée_, _Anatole France_, _Joris Karl Huysmans_, _Jean Richepin_, _Pierre Loti_, _Paul Bourget_, _Henri de Régnier_, _Henri Lavedan_, _Marcel Prévost_, _Georges Courteline_, _Alphonse Allais_. _RUSSIAN_ _Poushkin_, _Gogol_, _Turgenev_, _Dostoievski_, _Tolstoi_, _Korolénko_, _Garshin_, _Potapenko_, _Chekhov_, _Chirikov_, _Teleshov_, _Maxim Gorki_, “_Skitalitz_,” _Andreiev_. _ITALIAN AND SCANDINAVIAN_ _Enrico Castelnuovo_, _Giovanni Verga_, _Antonio Fogaszaro_, _Edmondo de Amicis_, _Matilda Serao_, _Gabriele d’Annunzio_, _Luigi Pirandello_, _Grazia Deledda_, _Björnson_, _Holger Drachmann_, _Jacob Ahrenberg_, _Jens Peter Jacobsen_, _Alexander Kielland_, _August Strindberg_, _Hermann Bang_, _Selma Lagerlöf_. _GERMAN_ _Heinrich Zschokke_, _Wilhelm Heinrich von Riehl_, _Paul Heyse_, _Ferdinand von Saar_, _Leopold von Sacher-Masoch_, _Rudolf Baumbach_, _Ernst von Wildenbruch_, _Max Nordau_, _Hermann Sudermann_, _Gabriele Reuter_, _Ludwig Fulda_, _Arthur Schnitzler_, _and Clara Viebig_. _About half of the stories have been especially translated for this collection, and some of them now appear in English for the first time. Among these will be found some by the more recent writers in Germany and Russia, two very interesting groups of moderns whose work has not received as much attention at the hands of the public as it would seem to merit._ _In only two or three cases, where the point of view was likely to fail of appreciation by American readers, have the stories been abbreviated or otherwise altered; and attention has been called to this in the accompanying note._ _The notes which preceded the stories in “Short Story Classics (American)” proved to be an appreciated and even popular feature, and it is hoped that those written for the present collection may prove equally acceptable._ _If any one country more than another can be said to excel in the use and development of the modern short story form, it is France. The literatures of Russia, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as that of the United States, have all been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the art of Balzac, Gautier, Mérimée, and De Maupassant, for in France short story writing may be said to be based on a theory of art, and to be, consequently, the result of conviction._