Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

In this volume we examine Gothic short stories from the woman’s point of view. More usually in this genre the main examples are almost always given as male. Well, in this volume we prove that view needs severely testing. Here we explore works by classic women authors who, with the sheer breadth of their talents and narratives, can make mere men seem tame by comparison.

1 - The Top 10 Short Stories - Women's Gothic - An Introduction

2 - The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

3 - The Lifted Veil - Part 1 by George Eliot

4 - The Lifted Veil - Part 2 by George Eliot

5 - The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

6 - The Ebony Frame by Edith Nesbit

7 - In Dark New England Days by Sarah Orne Jewett

8 - The Bishop of Hell by Marjorie Bowen

9 - The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth by Rhoda Broughton

10 - The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton

11 - The Shadows on the Wall by Mary E Wilkins Freeman

12 - The Ghost at the Rath by Rosa Mulholland