Nathaniel Hawthorne & Virginia Woolf 
Big Book of Best Short Stories – Volume 2 [EPUB ebook] 

Nathaniel Hawthorne: American novelist and short-story writer who was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
***
Virginia Woolf: Born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas. In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.
***
Henry James: Born on April 15, 1843, in New York City, Henry James became one of his generation’s most well-known writers and remains so to this day for such works as The Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw. Having lived in England for 40 years, James became a British subject in 1915, the year before his death. He died on February 28, 1916, in London, England.d in 1916.
***
Mark Twain: Born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the pen name Mark Twain and went on to author several novels, including two major classics of American literature: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, entrepreneur and inventor. Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut.
***
Guy de Maupassant: French writer Guy de Maupassant is famous for his short stories, which paint a fascinating picture of French life in the 19th century. He was prolific, publishing over 300 short stories and six novels, but died at a young age after ongoing struggles with both physical and mental health.
***
Charlotte Perkins: A prominent American sociologist, novelist, short story writer, poet, and lecturer for social reform, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 August 17, 1935) was a ‘utopian feminist.’ Her vast achievements, recorded during a period of American history where such feats were quite difficult for women, cast here as a role model for women everywhere. And her unorthodox concepts and lifestyles cast her as a role model for future generations of feminists.
***
Elizabeth Gaskell: was a Victorian era British novelist and short story writer, well regarded for her ghost stories in the genre of Gothic Literature.
***
Herman Melville: Born in New York City in 1819. He worked as a crew member on several vessels beginning in 1839, his experiences spawning his successful early novels. Subsequent books, including his masterpiece Moby-Dick, sold poorly, and by the 1860s Melville had turned to poetry. Following his death in New York City in 1891, he posthumously came to be regarded as one of the great American writers.
***
Katherine Mansfield: Born on October 14, 1888, in Wellington, New Zealand. After moving to England at age 19, Mansfield secured her reputation as a writer with the story collection Bliss (1920). She reached the height of her powers with her 1922 collection The Garden Party. Her last five years were shadowed by tuberculosis; she died from the disease on January 9, 1923, at the age of 34.
***
Jack London: Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. After working in the Klondike, London returned home and began publishing stories. His novels, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Martin Eden, placed London among the most popular American authors of his time. London, who was also a journalist and an outspoken socialist, died in 1916.