Introduction (The Country of the Blind and Other Stories)

Wells wrote this "Introduction" for The Country of the Blind and Other Stories, a 1911 collection of 33 stories that he selected. He introduces "this collection in one cover of all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. ... Many of very questionable merit find a place; it is an inclusive and not an exclusive gathering. ... The bulk of the fifty or sixty tales from which this present three-and-thirty have been chosen dates from the last century." During the 1900s Wells had nearly ceased writing short stories, he says.

This "Introduction" is reprinted in some later, smaller collections. For instance the 2007 Penguin Classic contains 23 stories including 18 of the 33 that Wells selected, and introduced in the essay.