Read The Happy Prince

A portrait ages while its subject sins; Wilde's only novel.

A Dublin party, a song heard on the stairs, and a husband learning about the boy his wife loved first; the last story in Dubliners.

A mermaid trades her voice for legs that hurt at every step, and does not get the prince; Andersen's ending is not the film's.

The twelve Strand stories, A Scandal in Bohemia to The Copper Beeches.

Ten young Florentines tell a hundred stories while the plague rages; the first modern prose.

Scheherazade keeps herself alive with Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba, a story a night.

The Lady with the Dog, Ward No. 6 and the rest; the short story as we know it.

Bruno Schulz's Drohobycz turned into myth; the stories a Gestapo officer's bullet ended.