Grouping together works by various authors into a theme should be relatively simple. Choose a theme, choose an author, choose a story. But some themes can be a little baffling. Modernism is a lovely bright term that should do exactly what it says on the cover. Yet the authors and stories themselves can be baffling in some respects or streamlined and clean lined words in another. Definitions of what is Modernism can seem arbitrary or blurred. In essence we can agree on some but not on others: Welcome to The Modernist Short Story as told by Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, D H Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, James Joyce and the pens of many others.