Background to the Short Story

The short story is the symbol of American literary independence. It was developed in America as a
literary form suited to the American way of life.

Story-telling has always been a favorite pastime. Some forerunners to the short story were anecdotes,
parables, fables, ballads, sketches, and tales. Yet it was in America that the short story truly came into its
own. Edgar A. Poe is called the "father" of the short story because he is credited with setting up the first
guidelines for the short story. According to Poe, the short story must have the following characteristics:

 It must produce a certain unique effect.

 It must have brevity (a reader should be able to read it in "one sitting").
 It must have unity.
 It must have intensity.
 It must begin with the first sentence (i.e., not spend too long on background, setting, introduction
of characters, etc.).

An essential characteristic of the short story is its brevity. Americans were busy clearing the wilderness
and building a nation. They had little time for the longer literary contributions characteristic of European
writings. Most Americans read magazines, journals, and newspapers. These were affordable (books were
expensive). And with improvements in printing, more corporations spent unprecedented amounts of
money on advertising in these publications.The number of periodicals published between 1865 and 1905
increased from about 700 to over 6,000 "all trying to satisfy the appetites of a vast new reading audience
that was hungry for news articles, essays, fiction, and poems (McMichael, et al, Anthology of American
Literature, 7th ed., p.6). Some of our best writers (Mark Twain, Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway, to name a few) became widely recognized because of the greater number of people who read
their stories in magazines.

Two other writers are credited with making significant contributions to this literary form. Bret Harte
started a trend of "local color" stories with his stories of early life in California. (See definition below).
Henry James produced a series of peculiarly modern psychological studies of the human mind and heart.

"LOCAL COLOR":

Local color is a term applied to fiction or verse which emphasizes its setting, being most concerned
with the character of a district or of an era, as marked by its customs, dialect, costumes, landscape,
or other peculiarities that have escaped standardizing cultural influences. The earliest American
writing reflects its locale, as all literature must, but the local-color movement came into particular
prominence in the U.S. after the Civil War, perhaps as an attempt to recapture the glamour of a past era,
or to portray the sections of the reunited country one to the other. Specifically, American influences upon
those authors known as local-color writers may be found in Down East humor and in the frontier tradition
of tall tales. In local-color literature, one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since
the author frequently looks away from the ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic
scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description. Bret Harte
is recognized as the first local color writer of the movement.