Part of the Bristol Classical Press series of Spanish texts, this is Horacio Quiroga's story Cuentos Escogidos. The series is designed to meet the needs of the fast-growing A Level and undergraduate market for texts in the Spanish language. Each text comes with English notes and vocabulary, and with an introduction by an editor with an expert knowledge both of the work and of its literary and cultural context. Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), a celebrated writer of the short story, played a leading role in the Modernist movement that emerged in Buenos Aires at the turn of the century. His stories combine something of Guy de Maupasant and Edgar Allan Poe, sharing Poe's interest in the strange and the abnormal but seldom straying from a realistic setting or psychological verisimilitude. This edition situates Quiroga in his literary and historical context and explores the central theme of his work - the conflict between man and environment.