Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author's brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted 'Top Tens' across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

For most of these women their fame more easily resides with their novels but each created short stories of such quality and verve that they simply had to be saved in inky type to paper. And each of these miniature gems is as near-perfect as their longer siblings. In their words literature is a many wondered treat.

01 - The Top 10 - The Classic Novelists - The Women- An Introduction

02 - Roman Fever by Edith Wharton

03 - The Lifted Veil - Part 1 by George Eliot

04 - The Lifted Veil - Part 2 by George Eliot

05 - An Unwritten Novel by Virginia Woolf

06 - The Mourner by Mary Shelley

07 - The Brothers by Louisa May Alcott

08 - The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

09 - Paul's Case by Willa Cather

10 - Ma'ame Pelagie by Kate Chopin

11 - Miss Ogilivy Finds Herself by Radclyffe Hall

12 -The Difference by Ellen Glasgow