Ian Jack's list

This week at The Week, Granta editor Ian Jack named "The List."

One of his titles:

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

Orwell’s 1937 investigation into the life of an English mining town showed what “documentary” writing could do, and it still remains one of reportage’s great achievements, though its socialist politics are history. Most things written by Orwell could be on any list of my favorite books.

Jack also named a collection of stories which he described thus:

These are a belated discovery for me: I read them for the first time only a year or two ago. Together with Chekhov’s I would put them among the finest stories ever written. As fresh and modern-seeming, especially about women, as when they were first published, around the time of the First World War.

Try to guess the author of these stories -- "among the finest stories ever written" -- before peeking at the answer and the rest of the list.

--Marshal Zeringue