[Responding to the objection that it might be desirable to read all 74 Wolfe stories in strict chronological order:]
I thought of that in my dream editor's plan, but:
The novelettes are mixed up, anyway. The final, posthumous volume,
Death Times Three, includes stories from 1940 to 1959. That's a
very large gap. Plus, you have instances like the collection
Three Men Out (called one of the best Wolfe novelettes collections by Michael E. Grost). This collection (1954) includes stories from 1942 (›
Invitation to Murder‹) to 1953 (›
The Zero Clue‹). ›
Invitation to Murder‹ thus predates 13 other Wolfe novelettes published in earlier years in earlier 5 novelettes collections.
I mentioned that to make the 7-volume edition of the
Corpus attractive to purchase for those who already possess all stories in earlier editions, the new comprehensive edition should include bonuses. One of such bonuses, included in each of the 7 volumes, could be a strict chronological time-line of
all 74 Wolfe stories, disregarding whether they are novels or short stories. This would provide the guidance to those readers who wish to (re)read the
Corpus in the
exact chronological order. Plus, it would be a further incentive for readers to buy all 7 volumes – because, having bought
Volumes 1 and
2, they would also need to buy
Volume 7 (due to ›
Bitter End‹, 1940) and
Volume 6 (due to
Black Orchids, 1942), if they wish to read
the 74 Wolfe stories in strict chronological order. And, of course, it would be stressed in the blurbs, just as in the expert forewords and afterwords, that reading the stories chronologically is strongly recommended
once you get hooked on Wolfe, as it's likely to increase your reading pleasure considerably!