By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Highway’ is from 1950: an early short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). In just a few pages, Bradbury gives us one of his earliest responses to the atom bomb and nuclear Armageddon. Bradbury is widely recognised as one of the greatest – and […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Blind Dog’ is a story from Malgudi Days, the short-story collection by the Indian writer R. K. Narayan (1906-2001). This short tale is about a blind beggar who is befriended by a stray dog; the man puts the dog on a lead and […]
‘The Boarded Window’ is a story by the American author Ambrose Bierce, who is also remembered for his witty The Devil’s Dictionary and for his mysterious disappearance in around 1914. Like many of Bierce’s tales, ‘The Boarded Window’ contains elements of the horror genre. The story is about a man […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) What are the best short stories about painters, artists, and the world of art? From Gothic pioneers like Edgar Allan Poe to realist writers like Edith Wharton, masters of the short story have often touched upon the subject of art and painting, using the […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘At the ’Cadian Ball’ is an 1892 short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904). The story is about two men and two women and their romantic involvements leading up to, during, and after the event known as the ’Cadian Ball, a social […]