W"The Aeroplanes at Brescia" is a short story by Franz Kafka published, in slightly shortened form, in the newspaper Bohemia on 29 September 1909. It describes an airshow near the Italian city of Brescia, which Kafka saw with two of his friends during their journey to Italy. Among other participants, they saw Louis Blériot, the aviator famous for the first flight across the English Channel. The story is lively and witty, as Kafka was fascinated by the airshow. It is also the first description of aeroplanes in German literature.
W"After Twenty Years" is a short story written by O. Henry, first published in his anthology, The Four Million in 1906.
WBig River, Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949 is a collection of stories written by Taiwanese author Lung Ying-tai published in August 2009. It tells in detail, the events from the surrounding the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War including Chinese families that were broken up by the civil war that ended in the Kuomintang’s defeat in 1949, with some two million escaping to Taiwan. Lung Ying-tai spent more than 10 years researching material for the book and spent 400 days in Changchun, Nanjing, Shenyang, Matsu Islands, Taitung County and Pingtung County paying a visit to survivors of the Chinese Civil War in order to record their stories.
W"Br'er Rabbit Earns a Dollar a Minute" is a traditional African American folktale, featuring Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. It is famous for its inclusion among Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories. Although its folk roots most likely trace back to ancient Africa, the folktale's first written appearance was as a chapter titled "Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Bear" in Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings, published in 1881.
W"The Butterfly that Stamped" is part of a series of books known as Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. These are collected short stories. The stories explain how things supposedly came to be.
W"Cat and Mouse in Partnership" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in Grimms' Fairy Tales. It is a story of Aarne-Thompson type 15.
W"The Chameleon" is a short story by Anton Chekhov published originally in the No. 36, 8 September 1884 issue of Oskolki magazine, subtitled "A Little Scene" (Сценка), signed A. Chekhonte. It was included into Chekhov's 1886 collection Motley Stories published in Saint Petersburg and reproduced unchanged in this book's 2–14 editions, in 1891–1899. It was included by Chekhov into Volume 2 of his Collected Works.
W"Clever Elsie" is a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. In the original 1812 edition, story #32 was called Hanses Trine. It was removed after the first edition and replaced by Die Kluge Elise in the 2nd edition.
W"The Count of Chanteleine" also known as The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution is a short story by Jules Verne published in 1864.
W"The Death of a Government Clerk" is a short story by Anton Chekhov published originally the Oskolki magazine's 2 July, No. 27 issue, subtitled "The Incident" (Случай) and signed A. Chekhonte. "Received the "Fragments of Moscow Life" and "The Death of the Government Clerk. Both are delicious", Nikolai Leykin, the Oskolki's editor, informed the author by a 29 June letter. It was included into Chekhov's 1886 collection Motley Stories published in Saint Petersburg and featured unchanged in its 2–14 editions (1891–1899).
W"The Empire of the Ants" is a 1905 short story by H. G. Wells about the littleness of humanity and the tenuousness of the dominion Homo sapiens enjoys on Earth. A 1977 film, Empire of the Ants, was loosely based on Wells' story.
W"The Figure in the Carpet" is a short story by American writer Henry James first published in 1896. It is told in the first person; the narrator, whose name is never revealed, meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author's works.
W"The First Step" is an article by Leo Tolstoy primarily advocating for vegetarianism, but at the same time also briefly mentioning themes relating to anarchism and pacifism. It was Tolstoy's preface to a book by Howard Williams, which Tolstoy translated into Russian.
W"The Garden of Paradise" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen first published by C. A. Reitzel in Copenhagen, Denmark on 19 October 1839 with "The Flying Trunk" and "The Storks" in Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection. Second Booklet. King Max read and liked the tale. Andersen biographer Jackie Wullschlager considers the story and its two companion pieces in the booklet as "grim". "The Garden of Paradise" ends with Death approaching a young prince and warning him to expiate his sins for, one day, he will come for him and "clap him in the black coffin".
W"A Gentleman Friend" is a short story by Anton Chekhov originally published on 20 April 1886 in Oskolki, titled "A Little Bit of Pain" and signed A. Chekhonte. On 6 July it was reprinted, unchanged, by Novosti Dnya. Under the new title it was included by Chekhov into Volume 1 of his Collected Works, published by Adolf Marks in 1899–1901.
WThe Hot Soldier is a satiric short story written in 1903 by Austrian author, storyteller, and dramatist Gustav Meyrink, as well as the title of the collection in which it appears.
W"The Ice-Maiden" is an 1861 literary fairy tale by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. The first English translation was published by King and Baird in 1863. The story, set in Switzerland, was inspired by a local legend about the Île de Peilz, a small island in Lake Geneva, which is also the setting of its denouement.
WIn the Year 2889 is an 1889 short story published under the name of Jules Verne, but now believed to be mainly the work of his son Michel Verne, based on his father's ideas. The first publication was in English in February 1889, in the American magazine The Forum.
W"Ivan the Fool" is an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1886. The name "Ivan the Fool" hints to a popular hero of Russian folklore.
W"Kholstomer" is a work by Leo Tolstoy that has been referred to as “one of the most striking stories in Russian literature”. It was started in 1863 and left unfinished until 1886, when it was reworked and published as "Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse". Georgi Tovstonogov staged it in his theatre in 1975. The horse was played by Evgeny Lebedev. This story prominently features the technique of defamiliarization by adopting the perspective of a horse to expose some of the irrationalities of human conventions.
WDer kleine Häwelmann is a German fairy tale written by Theodor Storm in 1849. In 1956, an eponymous film based on the fairy tale was released. Häwelmann is Low German and refers to a small child who demands excessive attention.
WThe Lesson of the Master is a novella written by Henry James, originally published in 1888.
W"A Malefactor" is an 1885 short story by Anton Chekhov.
WThe Man of Forty Crowns is a fable written by Voltaire.
W"Master and Man" is an 1895 short story by Leo Tolstoy.
W"Mugby Junction" is a set of short stories written in 1866 by Charles Dickens and collaborators Charles Collins, Amelia B. Edwards, Andrew Halliday, and Hesba Stretton. It was first published in a Christmas edition of the magazine All the Year Round. Dickens penned a majority of the issue, including the frame narrative in which "the Gentleman for Nowhere," who has spent his life cloistered in the firm Barbox Brothers & Co., makes use of his new-found freedom in retirement to explore the rail lines that connect with Mugby Junction. Dickens's collaborators each contributed an individual story to the collection.
W"A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" is a short story written by Mark Twain in 1876. It was published in a very small, unauthorized edition in 1945, with an authorized edition not appearing until 2001.
W"An Outpost of Progress" is a short story written in July 1896 by Joseph Conrad, drawing on his own experience at Congo. It was published in the magazine Cosmopolis in 1897 and was later collected in Tales of Unrest in 1898. Conrad in 1900 contributed this story to "The Ladysmith Treasury," to provide aid to English citizens besieged in Ladysmith, South Africa, during the Boer War. Often compared with Heart of Darkness, Conrad considered it his best tale, owing to its "scrupulousness of tone" and "severity of discipline".
W"Oysters" is a short story by Anton Chekhov published originally in the No. 486, 1884 issue of Budilnik magazine, subtitled "A Sketch" (Набросок) and signed A. Chekhonte. It was included into Chekhov's 1886 collection Motley Stories published in Saint Petersburg, and in a slightly revised version appeared in this book's next 13 editions, in 1892–1899. It was also included into the Russian Writers' Short Stories 1895 collection and later into the Volume 3 of The Collected Works by A.P. Chekhov's first edition.
WA Parisian Affair is a short story by Guy de Maupassant, first published in French in 1881, and published in English as a collection of short stories, by Penguin Classics in 2004. It was republished by Pocket Penguins in 2016.
W"Petrosinella" is a Neapolitan literary fairy tale, written by Giambattista Basile in his collection of fairy tales in 1634, Lo cunto de li cunti, or Pentamerone.
WThe Private History of a Campaign that Failed is one of Mark Twain's sketches (1885), a short, highly fictionalized memoir of his two-week stint in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard. It takes place in Marion County, Missouri, and is about a group of inexperienced militiamen, the Marion Rangers, who end up killing a stranger in panic.
W"Rinconete y Cortadillo" is one of the twelve short stories included in Novelas Ejemplares, by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes.
W"Riquet with the Tuft", also known as "Ricky of the Tuft", is a French literary fairy tale first published by Catherine Bernard in 1696. The more famous version is that of Charles Perrault in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.
WRumpole and the Primrose Path is a light hearted legal comedy, one of six short stories in an anthology by writer John Mortimer. It is the 12th in a series based in part on his own past experiences as a barrister but also notable for their use of themes topical at the time each was published. It begins with the eponymous hero marooned in a nursing home where he feels some shady business is going on. It was later the first episode in a short series of 45 minute radio plays starring real life husband and wife duo Timothy West and Prunella Scales. The additional stories were:Rumpole and the New Year's Resolutions Rumpole and the Scales of Justice Rumpole and the Right to Privacy Rumpole and the Vanishing Juror Rumpole Redeemed
W"Sergeant Prishibeyev" is an 1885 short story by Anton Chekhov.
W"The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo" is a short story — one of the Just So stories by Rudyard Kipling.
W"St. Cecilia, or the Power of Music" is a short story by the German author Heinrich von Kleist. The story was written on October 27, 1810 as a gift for daughter of his friend Adam Müller, and was first published in November 1810 in Kleist's literary journal, the Berliner Abendblätter.
WThe Steppe: The Story of a Journey is a novella by Russian writer Anton Chekhov. In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, along with several companions, including his parish priest and his uncle, a merchant.
W"The Stolen White Elephant" is a short story written by Mark Twain and published in 1882 by James R. Osgood. In this detective mystery, a Siamese white elephant, en route from Siam to Britain as a gift to the Queen, disappears in New Jersey. The local police department goes into high gear to solve the mystery but it all comes to a tragic end.
WThe Crow and the Sheep is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 553 in the Perry Index. Only Latin versions of it remain.
W"The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a short-story by American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). It was published in the February 1845 issue of Godey's Lady's Book and was intended as a partly humorous sequel to the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern tales One Thousand and One Nights.
W"The Three Questions" is a short story by Russian author Leo Tolstoy first published in 1885 as part of the collection What Men Live By, and Other Tales. The story takes the form of a parable, and it concerns a king who wants to find the answers to what he considers the three most important questions in life.
W"Tobias Mindernickel" is an early short story by Thomas Mann. Written in 1897, while Mann was living in Rome with his elder brother Heinrich it was first published in January 1898 in the German literary magazine Neue Deutsche Rundschau. It has subsequently appeared in several anthologies of Mann's short stories and novellas.
WToomai of the Elephants is a short story by Rudyard Kipling about a young elephant-handler. It was first published in St Nicholas Magazine and reprinted in the collection of Kipling short stories, The Jungle Book (1894). The character Petersen Sahib is thought to be modelled on George P. Sanderson (1848–1892).
WWhen I Was Mortal is a short story collection by the Spanish writer Javier Marías. It was translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa and published in the United Kingdom in 1999 by The Harvill Press and in the United States in 2000 by New Directions.
W"A Winter amid the Ice" is an 1855 short adventure story by Jules Verne.