This collection of short stories is very impressive in its scope and depth. It includes selections by writers from Russia, western Europe, England/ Ireland, and North America, from years that span the late 19th century though 1970. I appreciated the chance to read works by authors I was unfamiliar with, along with selections from authors that I knew only somewhat. The works are divided first by overall time frame, and subdivided by nationality. Among the authors represented are the following: Ambrose Bierce, Anton Chekhov, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Ted Hughes, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, D.H Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells, Leo Tolstoy, and Jean-Paul Sartre

While acknowledging the collection's ambitious scope, my reactions to the various selections were rather mixed, as is often the case with such collections. On a five-star scale, I ranked most with two to four stars, as indicated below. Significantly, the most recent stories (listed under the heading "New Dimensions" I found to be significantly lower in quality (or at least, not at all to my taste), with the notable exceptions of of Jackons' "The Lottery" (which any short story buff should know) and O’Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own"

This book may be hard to find, but at present, it can be checked out from an online library at the following web address: https://archive.org/details/realmoffiction6100hall/page/n3/mode/2up

Contents and my rankings are as follows:

The Older Masters
Russia:
A Living Relic (Turgenev) 1*
A Christmas Tree and a Wedding (Dostoevsky) 3*
The Story of Yemilyan and the Empty Drum (Tolstoy) 3*
The Bet (Chekhov) 3*

Europe:
Ritter Gluck (ETA Hoffman) --
The Taking of the Redoubt (P. Merimee) --
Consolation (G. Verga) --
The Piece of String (G. de Maupassant) 3.5*

England-Ireland:
The Traveler’s Story of a Terribly Strange Bed (W. Collins) 3*
A Tradition of 1804 (T. Hardy) 3*
The Sisters Qita (A. Bennett) 3*
The Story of Muhhammad Din *
The Lord of the Dynamos (HG Wells) 3*
The Remarkable Rocket (O. Wilde) 2*
An Outpost of Progress (J. Conrad) 3*

United States:
Young Brown (Hawthorne) --
The Black Cat (Poe) 4*
Tennessee’s Partner B. Harte) *
A Psychological Shipwreck (A. Bierce) **
Jim Baker’s Blue-jay Yarn (M. Twain) --
The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Stephen Crane) 4*
A Deal in Wheat (F. Norris) 2*

The Later Accomplishment
Russia:
The Young Man Who Flew Past (Averchenko) 3.5*
The Awakening (Babel) 3.5*
Our Father Who Art in Heaven (Katayev) --

Europe:
Tobias Mindernickel (Mann) X
The Poet (Babel) --
Jackals and Arabs (Kafka) --
The Last Judgement (Capek) 4*
The Chronicle of an Old Rose Tree (Myriveles) 3*
The Wall (Sartre) 2*
England- Ireland:
Ivy Day in the Committee Room (Joyce) – (?)
The Blind Man (Lawrence) --
The Fly (Mansfield) *
The Other Side of the Hedge (Forster) --
The Duchess and the Jeweler (Woolf) 3*
Her Table Spread (Bowen) --
Brother (Greene) --
Christmas Morning (O’ Connor) 4*

United States:
“Europe” (James) --
While the Auto Waits (O. Henry) 3*
The Egg (S. Anderson) 4*
The Long Way Out (Fitzgerald) 3*
A Clean Well- Lighted Place (Hemingway) 2*
A Rose for Emily (Faulkner) 3*
Rope (Katherine Anne Porter) 3*
The Benefits of American Life (James T. Farrell) 3*
Astronomer’s Wife (Kay Boyle) 3*

New Dimensions
The Boar Hunt (Vasconcelos) --
The Secret Miracle (Borges) --
The Lottery (Jackson) 4*
The Jewbird (Malamud) --
The Life You Save May Be Your Own (Flannery O’Connor) 4*
The Brigadier (Rosenfeld) --
Happy Marriage (Cassill) --
Wedding Night (Landolfi) --
Snow (T. Hughes) X
Us He Devours (James B. Hall) --
A World Ends (Hildesheimer) X
The Secret Room (Robbe-Grillet) X
Stories and Texts for Nothing, III (Beckett) X ( )