Subject Headings
To find physical or digital copies of short stories in the University Library use the Primo Library Catalog.
Use the following subject headings to search for books, periodicals, and electronic resources in the Primo Library Catalog:
FICTION / Asian American
FICTION / Short Stories (single author)
FICTION / Indigenous
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Women
FICTION -- Short Stories
Short Stories, American
Short Stories
Authors, American
American Fiction
American Fiction -- African American authors
Short Stories, American -- 21st century
Short Stories, American -- 20th century
Short Stories, American -- 19th century
Basic Sources
Single Authors
Databases
To find short stories in these databases, searches could include:
- By title, author, or "short stories" as a literary genre
- By "short stories" and an additional genre (horror, fantasy, mystery, science fiction)
- By ethnicity (Latin American short stories, Asian American short stories)
The Literature Resource Center provides "Topic and Work Overviews" with an introduction to the topic, representative works (including anthologies), a list of authors and works, and further reading. This is a great place to start researching about "short stories" if you'd like to learn more about them. Your search results can be filtered by subject, author, publication title, and biographical information.
- Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature This link opens in a new windowThe annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL) lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews and collections of essays published anywhere in the world; unpublished doctoral dissertations are covered for the period 1920-1999. The bibliography consists of 80 volumes, beginning in 1920 and issued annually. A number of items published between 1892 and 1919 have been indexed retrospectively.
- Early American Fiction This link opens in a new windowA collection of full texts of the first editions of American novels and short stories written before 1850 by authors of significance during their lifetimes
- Latino Literature This link opens in a new windowLatino Literature (LALI) brings together more than 100,000 pages pages of poetry, fiction, and over 450 plays written in English and Spanish by hundreds of Chicano, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latino authors working in the United States. Among the gems of the collection are nearly 800 items (poems, novels, and plays) that have never been published before. Researchers will also find numerous Chicano folk tales and audio files of selected poems and plays. The vast majority of works are from the period spanning the Chicano Renaissance to the present day. Roughly 30% of the database is made up of previously unpublished or rare materials.
- Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Searchable database of full-text articles, essays, book reviews, plot summaries, poems, short stories, plays, and interviews with contemporary writers. - ProQuest One Literature This link opens in a new windowThis database contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works. These include rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings. It also includes book reviews and criticism related to this content.
Literary Criticism
- Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature This link opens in a new windowThe annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL) lists monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews and collections of essays published anywhere in the world; unpublished doctoral dissertations are covered for the period 1920-1999. The bibliography consists of 80 volumes, beginning in 1920 and issued annually. A number of items published between 1892 and 1919 have been indexed retrospectively.
- Contemporary Literary Criticism This link opens in a new windowPart of Gale Literature Criticism Online. The databases covers authors who are currently active or who died after December 31, 1959. Profiles novelists, poets, playwrights and other creative and nonfiction writers by providing criticism taken from books, magazines, literary reviews, newspapers and scholarly journals
- Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new windowPart of Gale Literature Criticism Online. LCO covers a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres, offering tens of thousands of hard-to-find critical essays. Database subscriptions may include any or all of the following titles, based on subscriber preferences: Contemporary literary criticism; Twentieth-Century literary criticism; Nineteenth-Century literature criticism; Literature criticism from 1400-1800; Shakespearean criticism; Classical and medieval literature criticism; Poetry criticism; Short story criticism; Drama criticism; and Children's literature review.
- Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism This link opens in a new windowPresents literary criticism on the works of nineteenth-century writers of all genres, nations, and cultures. Critical essays are selected from leading sources, including published journals, magazines, books, reviews, diaries, broadsheets, pamphlets, and scholarly papers. Criticism includes early views from the author's lifetime as well as later views, including extensive collections of contemporary analysis.
HathiTrust
Identifying Keywords
To find short stories in HathiTrust relevant to your topic, search by keywords and their synonyms.
Example keyword searches:
- short stories
- best American short stories
- short story index
- selected short stories
Another way to search is by author or title. To do so, search by keyword "author or title," and switch "all fields" to "author" or "title" field to narrow your search results.
Example authors or titles:
- Ursula K. Le Guin (author)
- The Tell-Tale Heart (title by Edgar Allen Poe)
American Short Story Authors A-Z
Offers multiple categories of American short story writers: by century, ethnicity, and gender. (This list may not reflect all of the authors for each category.)
Offers a list of American short stories: can be searched by author, ethnic background, and collection. (This list may may not reflect all of the American short stories that are published and available.)
This list includes a list of genres of short stories. (May include short stories outside the American category. This is not a comprehensive list of short stories by genre and some genres have only a few short stories listed).
