"Proves That Mirth and Murder Can Mix"

MURDER WITHOUT TEARS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CRIME.
Edited by Will Cuppy (1884-1949).
Anthology: 28 items (chiefly short stories).
Sheridan House.
1946. 561 pages. $3.00 (seventy years ago).
No e-texts available.
For sale HERE.

Contents:
1. "What Makes a Good Murder?" / "Rules for Murderesses" - Edmund Pearson
2. "Malice Domestic, or, The Balham Mystery" / "The Wolves of West Port, A Tale of Terror" - William Roughead
3. "A Sort of Genius" - James Thurber
4. "Belle of Indiana" / "Murder at Harvard" - Stewart H. Holbrook
5. "The Tale of the Murderous Philologist with but One Big Toe" - Carl Carmer
6. "The Restless Bones of Lizzie Lowell" - Richard Dempewolff
7. "Murder Wholesale" - Frederick A. Mackenzie
8. "Fatal Occasions" / "Wife's Progress" / "Marriage à la Mode" / "Lessons in Love" - Newgate Calendar
9. "De Mortuis" - John Collier
10. "The Sailor-Boy's Tale" - Isak Dinesen
11. "An Introduction to Eric" - Ellis St. Joseph
12. "The Turn of the Tide" - C. S. Forester [filmed in 1983; go HERE]
13. "An Attempt at Murder" - Karel Čapek [reprinted in AHMM, October 1996]
14. "The Sins of Prince Saradine" - G. K. Chesterton [online HERE]
15. "The Gioconda Smile" - Aldous Huxley [online HERE]
16. "A Jury of Her Peers" - Susan Glaspell [online HERE]
17. "Accident" / Agatha Christie
18. "In the Teeth of the Evidence" - Dorothy L. Sayers
19. "Green Ice" - Stuart Palmer
20. "The Curate of Churnside" - Grant Allen [online HERE]
21. "They Can Only Hang You Once" - Dashiell Hammett [online HERE]
22. "Maddened by Mystery, or, The Defective Detective" - Stephen Leacock [online HERE]

A couple of contemporary reviews:

Versatile Mr. C, crime-critic, author, and humorist, sifts short murder yarns and comes up smiling with 28 unlugubrious examples. - Collection of works by American and English writers, including pungent nuggets from Newgate Calendar, proves that mirth and murder can mix. - Verdict: Very Good. — "The Criminal Record," THE SATURDAY REVIEW (July 27, 1946).

High level selection for this anthology of real and fictional crime stories which includes top notch fanciers, Roughead and Pearson, accounts from the Newgate Calendar, fiction from Collier, Forester, Chesterton, Huxley, Glaspell, Christie, Sayers,  Palmer, Hammett, and a spoof from Leacock. There are essays on a good murder, rules for murderesses, a survey of wholesale murders, and Father Brown, Peter Wimsey and Sam Slade [sic] among the sleuths. Among the anthologies - better taste and more smiles. — KIRKUS REVIEWS (July 1946)

Also collected by Will Cuppy:

WORLD'S GREAT MYSTERY STORIES.
Edited by Will Cuppy (1884-1949).
Anthology: 20 stories.
World Publishing Co.
1943. 299 pages.
No e-texts available.
A review is HERE.

Contents:
1. William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" [online HERE, PDF]
2. Agatha Christie, "The Adventure of the Clapham Cook"
3. Francis Brettt Young, "A Message to Laura"
4. Dorothy L. Sayers, "Suspicion"
5. Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Fiend of the Cooperage" [online HERE]
6. Edith Wharton, "Miss Mary Pask" [online HERE]
7. Charles Dickens, "The Signal-Man" [online HERE]
8. Arthur Machen, "The Cosy Room" [online HERE]
9. Irvin S. Cobb, "A Bird in the Hand"
10. Algernon Blackwood, "The Listener" [online HERE]
11. F. Scott Fitzgerald, "A Short Trip Home" [online HERE]
12. Edgar Wallace, "The Magic of Fear" [online HERE]
13. H. G. Wells, "The Door in the Wall" [online HERE]
14. W. W. Jacobs, "The Interruption" [online HERE]
15. Wilkie Collins, "The Dream Woman" [online HERE]
16. Ambrose Bierce, "The Boarded Window" [online HERE]
17. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, "Vain Oblations"
18. Edgar Allan Poe, "The Masque of the Red Death" [online HERE]
19. William Mudford, "The Iron Shroud" [online HERE, PDF]
20. Stephen Leacock, "Who do You Think Did It? or, The Mixed-Up Murder Mystery" [online HERE]

WORLD'S GREAT DETECTIVE STORIES: AMERICAN AND ENGLISH MASTERPIECES.
Edited and introduction by Will Cuppy (1884-1949).
Anthology: 14 stories.
World Publishing Co.
1943. 320 pages.
No e-texts available.

Contents:
1. "The Man with Copper Fingers" - Dorothy L. Sayers [online HERE]
2. "A Man Called Spade" - Dashiell Hammett
3. "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" - A. Conan Doyle [online HERE, PDF]
4. "The Man Who Was Missing" - Mignon G. Eberhart
5. "The Yellow Diamonds" - H. C. Bailey
6. "The Mystery of the Missing Wash" - Octavus Roy Cohen
7. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" - Edgar Allan Poe [online HERE]
8. "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb" - Agatha Christie [online HERE, PDF]
9. "The Seal of Nebuchadnezzar" - R. Austin Freeman [online HERE]
10. "The Adventure of the House of Darkness" - Ellery Queen
11. "The Elusive Bullet" - John Rhode [online HERE]
12. "The New Invisible Man" - Carter Dickson
13. "The Policeman's Cape" - David Frome
14. "The Stolen White Elephant" - Mark Twain [online HERE]

Resource:
- Satirist Will Cuppy's life wasn't so much fun, with him ending it as a suicide; see the Wikipedia article HERE.

Category: Mystery anthologies