SHORT STORY INDEX
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EXPLANATORY NOTES CONTENTS Please note that there are a number of different reasons why specific dates are missing from this index. Firstly, the Evening News was not published on Sundays or on Public Holidays. Furthermore, on certain dates there may have been no issues of the newspaper printed due to industrial action. An example of this occurred early in 1955, when a maintenance workers' strike on Fleet Street resulted in no London newspapers being printed for almost a month. Another more obvious reason why a date may be missing from this index is that there were no stories printed in the newspaper on that particular day. Indeed, for certain periods in the newspaper's history few short stories appeared. The year 1958 is a prime example of this, where for several months of this year there were no stories printed at all. For certain other years the inclusion of a short story in issues of the Evening News was a somewhat hit-and-miss affair. One can surmise that changes of editor and issues regarding layout and production no doubt contributed to this situation in certain instances. It is also worth noting that in the early years of the newspaper's history, there were no short stories printed at all. Short stories in the newspaper were not introduced until 1887, and it wasn't until 1894 that the short story first became a daily feature of the newspaper. Furthermore, for many years the newspaper tended to publish fiction serials instead of short stories. This was certainly the case during the 1910s and 1920s. Finally, certain dates have not been included in this index because the individual issues (or certain relevant pages from individual issues) are missing from the British Library archives. This applies to the following dates: June 17 and 18, 1904 It should be noted that many of these lost issues would in all likelihood not have contained a short story anyway. However in the case of those issues missing (in part or in whole) from the years 1941, 1942 and 1972, there would almost certainly have been short stories in these issues. Sadly, it would seem that these stories have been lost forever, unless the authors, their surviving relatives, or indeed Associated Newspapers are able to help? What is not Covered by this Index Although the purpose of this index is to cover all the short stories published in the Evening News, there are some exceptions worth pointing out. At times, the newspaper printed serialised fiction either instead of, or alongside, the regular short story feature. Typically, these serials would run for a week, though in earlier years the Evening News would often publish novel-length serials (known as "feuilletons") that would run for several months. None of these have been included in this index. However, as with John Creasey's Inspector West tales (which ran in the Evening News during the 1950s), a number of consecutive stories featuring series characters have been included, the criteria for inclusion being that the individual story can be read as a separate work in itself. Also not included in this index are the many individual entries in the long-running "World's Strangest Stories" column which began in 1954 and ran for several years. This is because these stories are (at least ostensibly) true-to-life accounts, which although fictionalised to a degree, fall beyond the scope of this particular index. Other "strange but true" stories and articles printed throughout the newspaper's history have not been indexed. Not included in this index are the many short-short stories written by C. E. Hodges that appeared between 1929 and 1938 in the Evening News' popular "Uncle Peter's Children's Hour" column. With very few exceptions, none of the stories published in the Evening News that were specifically aimed at children have been included in this index. The data presented on this website is derived from several months of private research carried out by myself in the Newspaper Reading Room of The British Library. My study of the library archives involved consulting several hundred reels of microfilm containing copies of thousands of issues of the Evening News newspaper. My initial reason for visiting The British Library was to locate stories by the author Rosemary Timperley in old issues of the Evening News. I knew she had written a number of stories for the newspaper, and I had a pretty good idea of which years I needed to search through. I started with the year 1950, and it wasn't long before I started unearthing dozens of her short stories. This greatly encouraged me, and soon after this I began to find stories by a number of other writers who interested me. At this point I got the idea of creating an index to all the short stories published in the newspaper so I decided to "take the plunge" and go ahead with the project! An Index to the Fiction Published in The Star For many years, London had three evening newspapers, the Evening News, The Star and the still-extant Evening Standard. Older generations will recall the familiar cry of "Star, News and Standard!" on the streets of the capital. Each of these news-sheets had a history of printing short stories, as indeed did countless other national and regional newspapers. In addition to this website, I have created An Index to the Fiction Published in The Star. The Daily Mail Fiction Index: 1896 - 1950 I have also created The Daily Mail Fiction Index: 1896 - 1950. |
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Copyright © 2006 Richard Simms |