Fyodor Sologub was a Russian poet, novelist and playwright, working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His work generally has a downcast outlook with recurring mystical elements, and often uses anthropomorphic objects or fantastical situations to comment on human behaviour. As well as novels (including the critically acclaimed The Little Demon ), Sologub wrote over five hundred short stories, ranging in length from half-page fables to nearly novella-length tales.

While most of his short stories were not contemporaneously translated, both John Cournos and Stephen Graham produced English compilations and contributed individual stories to publications such as The Russian Review and The Egoist . This collection comprises the best individual English translations in the public domain of Sologub’s short stories, presented in chronological order of the publication of their translation.