My thanks goes to Dover Publications for the ARC via NetGalley.

This anthology is exactly what it purports to be - a collection of short fiction written by well-known and slightly lesser-known female literary figures. The stories are entertaining and accessible, of various genres and complexity, and the very short introductions at the beginning of each do a good job placing the works and their authors in the context of the larger picture. It is an altogether brilliant method of sampling the work of writer and deciding whether to research her further, and it goes a lot way towards parting the curtains of time and blowing the dust off a significant, but unfortunately neglected part of literary achievement. The fact that this bears repeating in our so-called modern society is sad, but women can write, have written, and continue to write a lot and continue to write well, and deserve anthologies of their own, especially since they live in a world where their work is often looked down upon, elbowed out of collections and left to gather cobwebs.
An additional thing of note is that we are talking about the art of the short story, in its own way neglected in favour of the novel, so I wonder if it would be too much to say that this anthology focuses on a special kind of literary intersectionality.
Aimed at academic and general audiences alike, the collection covers a time-span of about one hundred years.
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I highly recommend this great collection of short stories. Read my full review on my blog: http://bookbindersdaughter.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/review-short-story-masterpie... ( )