Short stories from Life: The 81 prize stories in "Life's" Shortest Story Contest

In Short

This volume gathers eighty-one short stories selected from thousands of entries submitted to a 1915 contest hosted by Life magazine. Written under strict length limits, these brief tales capture early twentieth-century American fiction at a moment of transition. The stories span genres from trench-warfare thrillers and frontier Westerns to quiet domestic comedies and urban romances. Bound together by an emphasis on sharp narrative turns and decisive climaxes, the collection endures as a vivid historical snapshot of popular American storytelling, reflecting the era's social anxieties, humor, war news, and romantic ideals.

The Story

The anthology opens with an introduction outlining the origin of these micro-fictions, selected from a nationwide competition that challenged writers to tell complete stories in the briefest space possible. What follows is a rapid succession of standalone narratives that shift quickly across settings, moods, and social milieus.

In quiet small-town homes and city apartments, domestic life is continuously upended by absurd logic and sudden choices. A parishioner named Gretchen reads her Bible, calculates the shortage of available men after a war, and convinces her pastor and local maidens to institute a ten-wife-per-man policy, scandalizing the married women of the village. An elderly woman named Aunt Sarah sues for divorce on grounds of incompatibility, pays her ten dollars, and immediately returns home to cook a loving supper for the man she is no longer legally married to, satisfied that she has achieved an advanced intellectual state. In the corporate world, an unscrupulous dye manufacturer named Slivowitz fires his sharp young secretary on paper, sending him to infiltrate a rival company and steal their secret formula for mauve dye. Elsewhere, a lonely bank clerk named Raymond repeatedly returns a lost one-eyed cat named Cyclops to a young woman, only to have the feline escape back to his fence night after night until a marriage offer settles the matter.

The collection turns frequently toward dark, dramatic, and high-stakes encounters. On the Western frontier, a night at the Bodega saloon in a booming mining town is interrupted when a bad man shoots a stranger; a songstress named Rhyolite Rose recognizes the wounded victim as a figure from her past and orders him carried to her cabin. Along the Mexican border, an exhausted old white mare named by her impoverished owner is forced into night smuggling, quietly licking sugar from torn sacks while authorities raid the operation. In the theater of war, two cousins serving on opposing sides of a conflict rescue each other from firing squads, only to be cut down together by an unsparing sentry. In an occupied village, a mother forced by an enemy officer to choose which of her two sons will be executed for sniping selects her eldest, Alphonse, concealing the fact that she saved her younger son Petro only because he possesses the superior marksmanship needed to avenge them both. Through every variation, the arc of each brief story drives toward a swift, definitive resolution.

How It Unfolds

The mandate is issued Readers are introduced to a competition designed to test how much human drama, suspense, or comedic irony can be compressed into a few hundred words.

Domestic life strays from routine Characters confront unexpected dilemmas, from a village girl using biblical precedents to solve a shortage of husbands to an elderly wife seeking a divorce purely to live as an unmarried progressive.

Calculated schemes are launched Ambition and desperation take hold as a business owner orchestrates industrial espionage, send-offs at troop ships yield mysterious parting promises, and border thieves exploit any tool at hand.

Violence cuts through the ordinary The atmosphere sharpens as frontier saloons erupt into gunfire, trench warfare brings soldiers face-to-face with family members on opposing lines, and occupation forces issue cruel ultimatums.

The final turn lands Each tale closes on a sudden twist—a secret plan revealed, an ironic betrayal, a sacrifice made, or a quiet compromise struck before the curtain falls.

The People

• Gretchen Edeler wants to solve the husband shortage in her war-ravaged village. Thwarted by traditional laws, she uses biblical examples of polygamy to persuade her pastor, uniting twenty-eight men with two hundred and eighty-one women.
• A. Slivowitz wants complete dominance over the dye trade. Hindered by a rival company's superior mauve product, he fires his private secretary, Sloane, instructing him to get hired by the competitor, steal the formula, and bring it back for a cash reward.
• Aunt Sarah wants to achieve an untethered, progressive intellectual life. Feeling held back by conventional marriage, she pays ten dollars for a divorce, returning home that evening happily living as an unmarried woman with the very same husband.
• Raymond wants to find a way to court a young woman named Miss Liza. Stymied by his own shyness, he is aided by a persistent, one-eyed cat named Cyclops, who repeatedly escapes to his house until Raymond proposes.
• The Peasant Mother wants to protect her family under enemy occupation. Confronted by an officer who demands she choose which of her two sons to execute for sniping, she sacrifices her eldest son to preserve her younger son’s superior marksmanship.

In Its Own Voice

"The Bible says that Jacob had two wives and that Solomon had seven hundred wives. Is it right for men to have many wives?" Gretchen Edeler questions Pastor Brandt after realizing over two hundred girls in her village remain unmarried following the war.

"No longer was there a blot on the scutcheon of her intellectual progress; no longer did a black beetle mar the pellucid amber of her simple life of Advanced Ideas..." Aunt Sarah reflects in triumph after securing a legal divorce from her husband while immediately serving him a home-cooked dinner.

"You mean Nell'll die if some one don't swap his blood for hers?" A young man hesitates in the hospital waiting room before agreeing to a life-saving blood transfusion for his injured sister.

What It's Really About

The collection functions as a study in compression, exploring how human character reveals itself under sudden pressure. Beneath the varied plots runs a shared fascination with resourcefulness, moral compromise, and the unforeseen consequences of split-second decisions. The stories repeatedly question the limits of loyalty—whether to family, country, romantic partners, or financial self-interest—and test how quickly societal norms dissolve when war, poverty, or affection intervene. By focusing on critical junctures rather than long developments, the book argues that a person's true nature is defined not by long speeches or background, but by how they react when forced to choose in an instant.

Why Read It Today

This collection will appeal to lovers of classic short fiction, flash fiction, and period American literature. It offers a swift, engaging reading experience, perfectly suited for picking up in short bursts. Readers who enjoy literary economy, sharp punchlines, and vintage slice-of-life storytelling will find much to admire in the variety of voices and premises on display.

Reading the collection today also provides a clear lens into the popular imagination of 1916 America. The prose carries the specific cadence, idioms, and theatrical setups of early twentieth-century magazine writing. Readers should be prepared for period attitudes, melo-dramatic tropes, and dialect spellings that reflect the era in which they were written. Yet beyond these historical markers, the stories retain a remarkable vitality. The brevity of each entry prevents the narrative from dragging, leaving the reader with a lasting impression of narrative ingenuity and the endless ways human beings attempt to outwit fate.