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.