4 h 15 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 4 h 15 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when ordinary city life leaves just enough room for the impossible?
In Tales of Fantasy and Fact, Brander Matthews brings the fanciful close to everyday life. Some tales turn toward the strange, the playful and the unlikely. Others enter the familiar world of cities, clubs and drawing rooms. Together, they invite you to look twice at the boundary between what seems possible and what feels true.
Matthews is both a storyteller and a critic who cares about the short story as an art. His fiction pairs a sharp eye for manners with a light touch. Here, the pleasure lies not in headlong action, but in polished tales, human observation and the way a clean ending gathers a story together.
What you’ll discover
- Fantasy beside fact Explore tales where the imaginary sits beside the ordinary, each sharpening your sense of the other.
- Clubs and drawing rooms Step into social worlds where manners give Matthews rich material for close, witty observation.
- A critic tells tales Discover fiction by a writer who thinks deeply about what makes a short story work.
- The pleasure of shape Enjoy clear, carefully built narratives whose clean closes draw their separate threads together.
- Wonder with a light touch Find gentle surprises in stories that balance playful imagination with an eye for everyday life.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy ghost stories told with humor, clever puzzles, and playful tales inspired by other books will love this collection. It suits those drawn to old New York.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Phantom Captain Sails Through Imaginary Lands
- A Midnight Hall Shows Dances and Duels
- A Gray Silk Gown Carries a Man Through Time
- Two Ghosts Quarrel in a Little Old House
- A Grandmother Misses Sixteen Years of Birthdays
- A Telegram Warns of a Leak at the Steel Works
- Fact and Fiction Keep Trading Places
- Frames, Tellers and Borrowed Plots Hold It Together
Who’s who
- Captain VanderdeckenThe Flying Dutchman, a sad old sailor who guides the narrator past the coasts of imaginary lands.
- Cosmo WaynfleteA traveler just home to New York, who falls into a crystal-ball dream and lives several lives in one Christmas afternoon.
- Paul StuyvesantCosmo's friend, who loves solving mysteries and has a ready explanation for every strange dream.
- Uncle LarryA seasoned ocean traveler who holds a steamer deck spellbound with the tale of two quarreling ghosts.
- Eliphalet DuncanA half Scottish, half Yankee lawyer who owns a haunted house and must settle his ghosts to win his bride.
- Paul WhittierA young heir to an old steel firm who is determined to find out who is leaking the firm's secret bids.
- Mr. WheatcroftThe stout, fiery junior partner who is certain a thief sits inside the office.
- Major Van ZandtThe firm's faithful old bookkeeper, who carries a private family sorrow and grows pale as the hunt closes in.
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Tales of Fantasy and Fact
by Brander Matthews · 1896
A midnight stranger offers to show you your future, and the price is one year of your life for every ten.
Medium level2–5 hours to readfrançais
Excellent
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In short
What would you pay to see your own future? In one tale in this book, a stranger in a round hall of velvet curtains names his price.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Phantom Captain Sails Through Imaginary Lands
The first tale, A Primer of Imaginary Geography, begins in the dark. The narrator hears a hail from another ship. Voices ask where his boat comes from and where it is bound. The answers are the City of Destruction and Ultima Thule.
He wakes in a stateroom and meets the captain, a tall dark man with a sad face. The narrator names him at once as Captain Vanderdecken, the Flying Dutchman. The captain is pleased to learn his guest is a New Yorker. He calls Diedrich Knickerbocker his cousin.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 15 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1896
- Language
- français
- Reading time
- 2 h 45 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Matthews, Brander. Tales of Fantasy and Fact. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-fantasy-and-fact.
Matthews, B. (2026). Tales of fantasy and fact. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-fantasy-and-fact (Original work published 1896)
Matthews, Brander. Tales of Fantasy and Fact. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-fantasy-and-fact.
@book{matthews2026tales,
author = {Matthews, Brander},
title = {Tales of Fantasy and Fact},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-fantasy-and-fact},
note = {First published 1896}
}
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What is Tales of Fantasy and Fact about?
It holds six short tales by Brander Matthews. They include a voyage through imaginary lands, a midnight hall of visions, a crystal-ball dream, a ghost story, a calendar puzzle and a detective story set in a steel office.
Who is Captain Vanderdecken in the first tale?
He is the Flying Dutchman of legend, a sad sea captain who has sailed for centuries. In the book he acts as a tour guide through lands from poems and novels, such as Arden and Altruria.
What is the Kinetoscope of Time?
It is the title of the tale about a midnight hall with four viewing stands. Two show dances and battles from literature and history, and two offer the viewer's own past and future, at a price paid in life.
The author
Brander Matthews
1852–1929 · American literary critic and professor
Brander Matthews was an American critic, essayist, and story writer — the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at an American university and a fixture of New York literary life; Tales of Fantasy and Fact shows his lighter, inventive side.
More by Brander Matthews
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