On Love

The short story is the perfect form in which to explore the rollercoaster emotions of romance. This collection of fifteen classic short stories from the late Victorian era to the 1940s includes tales by writers as diverse as Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Katherine Mansfield and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and explores not only the experience of falling in love but also the poignant themes of dazzling affairs, unrequited desires, divorce, youthful romance and passion in old age. The young couple in O. Henry’s tender tale ‘The Gift of the Magi’ are willing to give up their prized possessions for the sake of bringing each other happiness, while the heroine of Louisa May Alcott’s story has an agonizing wait for her version of Prince Charming. Unrequited passion haunts Thomas Hardy’s tragic heroine in ‘The Son’s Veto’, as it does in Lytton Strachey’s short sketch of a man who suppressed his youthful desires, while a sudden blossoming of love in old age blesses the characters in L.M. Montgomery’s pastoral tale. An irresistible collection of many kinds of love, this is the perfect book for lovers of classic literature.