At the age of twenty-two, Ernest Hemingway wrote his first short story, "Up in Michigan." Seventeen years later and forty-eight titles later, he was the undisputed master of the short-story form and the leading American man of letters. "The Short Stories, " introduced here with a revealing preface by the author, chronicles Hemingway's development as a writer, from his earliest attempts in the chapbook "Three Stories and Ten Poems, " published in Paris in 1923, to his more mature accomplishments in "Winner Takes Nothing." Originally published in 1938 along with "The Fifth Column, " this collection premiered "The Capital of the World" and "Old Man at the Bridge, " which derive from Hemingway's experiences in Spain, as well as "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro, " which figure among the finest of Hemingway's short fictions.