Scratch Classics

Sep 1, 20231 min read

Pre-order THE POET & THE ECHO - Subscribers' Offer

Pre-orders are now open for The Poet & the Echo before its launch on 12th September. Touching and powerful stories written in response to...

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Jul 15, 202314 min read

‘The Strength of God’ by Sherwood Anderson

Introduction by Russ Litten I first read Winesburg, Ohio in my late teens. I had fallen in love with American Literature - Raymond Carver...

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Jul 8, 202311 min read

'Lou, The Prophet' by Willa Cather

Introduction by Elsa Court Willa Cather began publishing stories in her student years and continued until the end of her life. While many...

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Jul 2, 20231 min read

Beach Reading - Summer Discount!

Summer holidays are approaching and we're buying books we'll pack for the beach... The big literary journals will open their submission...

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Jul 1, 202312 min read

'The Necklace' by Guy De Maupassant

Introduction by Naomi Wood What an exquisite fantasist is the woman at the heart of Maupassant’s gloriously unfair short story ‘The...

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Jun 23, 202327 min read

'A Cross Line' by George Egerton

Introduction by Hannah Clark A Cross Line, the opening story in George Egerton’s (1859 – 1945) collection, Keynote (1898), is an...

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Jun 17, 202315 min read

'Three Drops of Blood' by Sadeq Hedayat

Introduction by RZ Baschir I came across the Alma Classics edition of Three Drops of Blood in one of those secondhand book boxes outside...

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Jun 10, 202313 min read

'Alice’s Adventures through the Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll

Introduction by Camille U. Adams As a child, since I was three years old, I’ve read almost any storybook of which I can get a hold....

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Jun 1, 202321 min read

'Miss Mary Pask' by Edith Wharton

Introduction by Brittany Terwilliger I’ve always cited “The Age of Innocence” as one of my favorite books, and it surprised me to...

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May 27, 20237 min read

'Old Shloyme' by Isaac Babel

Introduction by Sara Lippmann I knew I wanted to pick a story by Isaac Babel. Born in Odessa, celebrated as one of the most vital Soviet...

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May 19, 202310 min read

'The Fly' by Katherine Mansfield

Introduction by Mike Fox Written in three weeks in a Paris hotel when Mansfield was desperately ill, The Fly is a story about death, the...

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May 17, 20231 min read

The Scratch A4 Event - Saturday June 10th

We love parties, us. We got a bit of a reputation for our launch dos last year but we're only publishing one book this year - so we've...

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May 12, 2023108 min read

'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton' by George Eliot

Introduction by Gemma Seltzer I highly recommend George Eliot’s first story ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton’ (1857)....

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May 5, 202326 min read

'The Door in the Wall’ by H.G. Wells

Introduction by Mark A Radcliffe On the face of it, ‘Door In The Wall’ by H G Wells, first published in 1911, is a story about the...

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Apr 29, 202320 min read

The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens

Introduction by Adam Farrer I came to The Signalman late. Just last year in fact, while researching short ghost stories. I’d rashly...

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Apr 21, 20235 min read

‘Savannah-La-Mar’ by Thomas De Quincey

Introduction by Jesi Bender In trying to choose one favorite short story for this project, I found that I was surrounded by horror...

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Apr 14, 202320 min read

‘Home Sickness’ by George Moore

Introduction by Stephen Moran “There is an unchanging, silent life within every man that none knows but himself.” I was introduced to...

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Apr 9, 20231 min read

The Scratch A4 Competition - Deadline 30th April

There's only three weeks left until the closing date of our Scratch A4 competition! Enter your really short short story (a thousand words...

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Apr 7, 202348 min read

‘England, My England’ by D. H. Lawrence

Introduction by Keiran Goddard First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Lawrence is a faintly absurd figure. There is something...

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Mar 31, 202324 min read

‘Madam Crowl’s Ghost’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Introduction by James Ward In the summer of 1923, M.R. James penned an introduction to a new collected short stories of Joseph Sheridan...

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