The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.
§ 1. Stages in the Development of the American Short Story
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That the prose story was no innovation peculiar to later literature, is an axiom that must precede every discussion of it. It is as old as the race; it has cropped out abundantly in every literature and every period. That it has taken widely differing forms during its long history is also axiomatic. Every generation and every race has had its own ideals in the matter, has set its own fashions. One needs remember only The Book of Ruth, The Thousand and one Nights, the Elizabethan novella, the Sir Roger de Coverley papers, Johnson’s Rambler, Hannah More’s moral tales, and the morbid romance of the early nineteenth-century annuals. The modern short story is only the latest fashion in story telling—short fiction à la mode.