Well-versed in European languages and an archaeologist by profession, Prosper Mérimée (1803-70) wrote stories and novellas which displayed his concern for historical accuracy and his fascination for foreign places.

O. Henry (Greensboro, 1862 - Nueva York, 1910). Seudónimo de William Sidney Porter. Narrador estadounidense, muy popular por sus relatos humorísticos y de finales sorprendentes, al que junto a E. A. Poe, B. Harte y M. Twain se considera fundador de la proverbial short story norteamericana.Como si se tratase de una de sus historias, en 1896 recibió una citación para presentarse ante un tribunal por el hurto de una pequeña suma de un banco de Austin en el que había estado empleado. Huyó y a su vuelta estuvo tres años en prisión.En 1902 se traslada a Nueva York, donde escribirá algunos de sus mejores libros de relatos, como The Four Million, cuyos cuentos están recogidos en el libro que ahora publicamos. Describe a la gente común y corriente de Nueva York a través de la ironía, la burla y el realismo que lo hizo famoso, además del afortunado uso del lenguaje popular.

Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 - June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer who helped establish the Realist movement and was an early adopter of the styles of American Naturalism and Impressionism.A writer at a very early age, Crane was in print multiple times before he was sixteen. He briefly attended - but then left - Syracuse University and soon began work as a reporter. He published his first full-length novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in 1983 which went on to be recognized as the first example of Naturalistic writing.Two years later, Crane published the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, which was an international hit praised for its realism and authenticity, despite Crane never having set foot on a battlefield.Crane traveled to New York the following year to research a book on policemen and made the acquaintance of several young ladies who were working in the Tenderloin district, one of which was a prostitute named Dora Clark. After Clark was arrested for solicitation (the latest of several such arrests), Crane chivalrously testified on her behalf and the affair quickly turned into a very public scandal.Soon afterwards, Crane traveled to Cuba as a war correspondent and, on the way to the Caribbean, met and befriended Cora Taylor, later recognized as the first female war reporter. Leaving Florida, Crane's boat, the SS Commodore, sank and stranded Crane and his shipmates on a dinghy for thirty hours, an ordeal he recounts in his short work The Open Boat.Crane and Taylor would later travel to Greece as war reporters and soon afterwards moved to England together, where Crane made the acquaintance of two of the literary titans of the late 19th century, H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, both of whom held Crane in high esteem.Thereafter, Crane's health and finances took a nasty turn and he ended his short life in a German sanitarium, dying there of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight.

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) es una escritora estadounidense mejor conocida por sus historias sobre la vida interior de mujeres sensibles y atrevidas. su novelaEl despertary sus cuentos se leen hoy en países de todo el mundo, y es ampliamente reconocida como una de las autoras esenciales de Estados Unidos.

John R. McKivigan is the Project Director and Editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers and Mary O'Brien Gibson Professor of United States History at IUPUI. Heather L. Kaufman is a research associate on the editorial staff of the Frederick Douglass Papers. John Stauffer is professor of English and American Literature and African American Studies and chair of the Program in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. He is the author most recently of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881), was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes.