Release date is 2026-04-18

Miss Bracegirdle does her duty -- Where was Wych Street? -- The octave of jealousy -- The funny man's day -- The beautiful, merciless lady -- The accident of crime -- "Old Fags" -- The angel of accomplishments -- The match -- Mrs. Beelbrow's lions -- A man of letters -- "Face" -- The brown wallet.

Carol Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Miss Bracegirdle and others" by Stacy Aumonier is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The tales blend irony, compassion, and suspense as ordinary people stumble into sharp moral tests and social entanglements, from a timid Englishwoman abroad to London toughs and quietly envious villagers.

The opening of the collection first follows Miss Millicent Bracegirdle, a dutiful spinster who, after a daunting journey to Bordeaux, mistakenly enters a stranger’s room, hides under his bed in panic, then discovers he is dead—later learning he was a wanted killer—and escapes with her reputation intact, keeping the night’s ordeal to herself. Next, a barroom argument over the vanished Wych Street triggers a brawl, a notorious Wapping siege, and a public inquiry; a rising K.C. is twice humiliated over that trivial point, then risks his career when conscience won’t let him issue a false apology to a powerful rival. Finally, “The Octave of Jealousy” begins with a tramp on the road and moves through a country chain of comparisons and quiet resentments—farmhand, gamekeeper, shopkeeper, publican, and gentry—showing how small envies ripple through a village and set larger tensions in motion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916