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CLASSIC SHORT STORIES

One of the best ways of improving your English is to read the language. This part of our site includes complete short stories by some of the very best classic writers. All stories are complete and unabridged. Read them online or print them off and read them in bed! One new story is added to our site every month. All stories are in the public domain and now copyright free. If you're looking for a larger range of free classic English literature online, try the English Library. Or if modern short stories are your thing try here.

Aesop's Fables Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7   Part 8 Resumed Identity by Ambrose Bierce A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins The Idiots by Joseph Conrad The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky by Stephen Crane The Last Lesson by Alphonse Daudet A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens The Boscombe Valley Mystery (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Copper Beeches (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Field Bazaar (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Sussex Vampire (Sherlock Holmes) bt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Final Problem (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventure Of Charles Augustus Milverton by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby by Joel Chandler Harris Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving A School Story by M. R. James The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome A Little Cloud by James Joyce How the Leopard Got His Spots by Rudyard Kipling The Rocking Horse Winner by D. H. Lawrence A Wicked Woman by Jack London Rain by W. Somerset Maughan Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville Politics and the English Language by George Orwell The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter The Avenger by Thomas de Quincey   Hunter Quartermain's Story by H. Rider Haggard Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard   The Music on the Hill by Saki Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (simplified by C and M. Lamb) Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker The Valley of Spiders by H. G. Wells    A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf