During the past year the Seven Arts and the Masses have ceased publication. The Craftsman, which ceased publication a year ago, has been succeeded by the Touchstone, which is already beginning to print many interesting stories; and to the list of magazines which publish short stories must now be welcomed the Bookman.
As it has been my happiness in past years to associate this annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt and Richard Matthews Hallet, whose stories, "Zelig" and "Making Port," seemed to me respectively the best short stories of 1915 and 1916, so it is my pleasure and honor this year to dedicate the best that I have found in the American magazines as the fruit of my labors to Wilbur Daniel Steele, who has contributed to American literature, preëminently in "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," and almost as finely in "White Hands" and "The Woman At Seven Brothers," three stories which take their place for finality, to the best of my belief, in the great English line.
Edward J. O'Brien.
South Yarmouth, Massachusetts,
December 23, 1917.
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917
Note. The twenty stories which follow are arranged in the alphabetical order of their authors' names. This arrangement does not imply any precedence in merit of particular stories.