For sale: baby shoes, never worn

A six-word story regarding a pair of baby shoes is considered an extreme example of flash fiction.
This May 16, 1910 article from The Spokane Press recounts an earlier advertisement that struck the author as particularly tragic.
Literature
Oral literature
Major written forms
Long prose fiction
Short prose fiction
Prose genres
Fiction
Non-fiction
Poetry genres
Narrative
Lyric
Lists
Dramatic genres
History
Lists and outlines
Theory and criticism
Literature portal

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." is a six-word story, and one of the most famous examples of flash fiction. Versions of the story date back to the early 1900s, and it was being reproduced and expanded upon within a few years of its initial publication.[1][2]

The story is popularly misattributed to Ernest Hemingway; this is implausible, as versions of the story first appeared in 1906, when Hemingway was 7 years old, and it was first attributed to him in 1991, 30 years after his death.[1][3]

  1. ^ a b Garson O'Toole (January 28, 2013). "For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn". quoteinvestigator.com. Retrieved 19 April 2013.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Haglund, David (Jan 31, 2013). "Did Hemingway Really Write His Famous Six-Word Story?". Slate. Archived from the original on 19 April 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2013.