This wide-ranging collection of romantic tales features an international array of authors, including Sherwood Anderson, Alexander Pushkin, Anthony Trollope, and Giovanni Verga. In addition to new translations, the anthology features less-familiar stories not routinely found in similar compilations.
Selections include A Misfortune by Anton Chekhov, in which a young wife attempts to end an affair; The Earthquake in Chile by Heinrich von Kleist, recounting a seventeenth-century romance; The She-Wolf by Giovanni Verga, a Sicilian tale of a mother and daughter in love with the same man; and Anthony Trollope’s Miss Ophelia Gledd, in which a Boston debutante must choose between two suitors. Additional stories include D. H. Lawrence’s portrait of sexual jealousy in The White Stocking; a bayou tale by Kate Chopin, Azélie; and The Other Woman by Sherwood Anderson, in which a groom waxes nostalgic on the night before his wedding.