With precise observation skills, a thorough knowledge of his environment and a journalistic wit, Jan Neruda recounts the life stories of Prague figures with the benevolent insight of an experienced storyteller. Sometimes comical, sometimes fatally tragic, but always truthfully based on complicated interpersonal relationships, financial and social conditions or religious traditions. Despite the archaic language typical of the time of its creation, the world shines through in a most up-to-date way and proves that human thinking and characters are no different from those of the 19th century even today. The masterfully drawn characters, their precise psychology and the description of their appearance and daily habits, framed by the backdrops of Prague before 1848, make Povídek malostraských Neruda's best collection of prose, with which he crossed the genre boundaries of realism and became a pioneer of the Czech modern short story.