Prehistory – 1790 CE Short stories date back to oral storytelling traditions which originally produced epics such as the
Ramayana, the
Mahabharata, and
Homer's
Iliad and
Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or
rhythmic
verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer,
Homeric epithets. Such stylistic devices often acted as
mnemonics for easier recall, rendition, and adaptation of the story. While the overall arc of the tale was told over the course of several performances, short sections of verse could focus on individual narratives that were the duration of a single telling. It may be helpful to classify such sections as oral short stories. Another ancient form of short story popular during the
Roman Empire was the
anecdote, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the
Gesta Romanorum. Anecdotes remained popular throughout Europe well into the 18th century with the publication of the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir
Roger de Coverley. {{image frame In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written form in the early 14th century, most notably with
Giovanni Boccaccio's
Decameron and
Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories, which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fiction, set within a larger narrative story (a
frame story), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "
novella" of Italian author
Matteo Bandello, especially in their French translation. The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as
Madame de Lafayette. Traditional
fairy tales began to be published in the late 17th century; one of the most famous collections was by
Charles Perrault. The appearance of
Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the
1001 Arabian Nights, a storehouse of Middle Eastern folk and fairy tales, is the
Thousand and One Nights (or
Arabian Nights) (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12). His translation would have an enormous influence on the 18th-century European short stories of
Voltaire,
Diderot and others. In India, there is a rich heritage of ancient folktales as well as a compiled body of short fiction which shaped the sensibility of modern Indian short story. Some of the famous
Sanskrit collections of legends, folktales, fairy tales, and fables are
Panchatantra,
Hitopadesha and
Kathasaritsagara.
Jataka tales, originally written in
Pali, is a compilation of tales concerning the previous births of Lord
Gautama Buddha. The
Frame story, also known as the frame narrative or
story within a story, is a narrative technique that probably originated in ancient Indian works such as
Panchatantra. The evolution of printing technologies and periodical editions were among the factors contributing to the increasing importance of short story publications. Pioneering the rules of the genre in the
Western canon were, among others,
Rudyard Kipling (United Kingdom),
Anton Chekhov (Russia),
Guy de Maupassant (France),
Rabindranath Tagore (India and Bangladesh),
Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (Mexico) and
Rubén Darío (Nicaragua).
1790–1850 Early examples of short stories were published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries. The first short stories in the United Kingdom were
gothic tales like
Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative", "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Novelists such as Sir
Walter Scott and
Charles Dickens also wrote influential short stories during this time. Germany soon followed the United Kingdom's example by producing short stories; the first collection of short stories was by
Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and 1811. In the United States,
Washington Irving was responsible for creating some of the first short stories of American origin, "
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "
Rip Van Winkle".
Edgar Allan Poe became another early American short story writer. His concise technique, deemed the "single effect", has had tremendous influence on the formation of the modern short story. Examples include: •
France •
Prosper Mérimée •
Mateo Falcone (1829) •
Germany •
E. T. A. Hoffmann • "
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816), • "
The Sandman", •
Brothers Grimm • ''
Grimms' Fairy Tales'' (1812) •
United States •
Edgar Allan Poe • "
The Fall of the House of Usher", • "
The Tell-Tale Heart", • "
The Cask of Amontillado", • "
The Pit and the Pendulum", • "
The Gold Bug", • "
The Murders in the Rue Morgue" – one of the first
detective stories • "
The Purloined Letter" – one of the first detective stories •
Nathaniel Hawthorne •
Twice-Told Tales (1837) •
John Neal • "Otter-Bag, the Oneida Chief" (1829) • "David Whicher" (1832)
1850–1900 In the latter half of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. In 1890s Britain, literary periodicals such as
The Yellow Book,
Black & White, and
The Strand Magazine popularized the short story. Britain was not alone in the endeavor to strengthen the short story movement. French author
Guy de Maupassant composed the short stories "
Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and "''L'Inutile Beauté''" ("The Useless Beauty", 1890), which are important examples of French
realism. Russian author
Anton Chekhov was also influential in the movement. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India, many writers created short stories centered on daily life and the social scene of the different socioeconomic groups.
Rabindranath Tagore published more than 150 short stories on the lives of the poor and oppressed such as peasants, women, and villagers under colonial misrule and exploitation.
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Tagore's contemporary, was another pioneer in Bengali short stories. Chattopadhyay's stories focused on the social scenario of rural Bengal and the lives of common people, especially the oppressed classes. The prolific Indian author of short stories
Munshi Premchand, pioneered the genre in the
Hindustani language, writing over 200 short stories and many novels in a style characterized by realism and an unsentimental and authentic introspection into the complexities of Indian society. In 1884,
Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published
The Philosophy of the Short-Story. During that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of
narrative fiction was
Henry James, who produced some of the most influential short narratives of the time. The spread of the short story movement continued into South America, specifically Brazil. The novelist
Machado de Assis was an important short story writer from Brazil at the time, under the influences of
Xavier de Maistre,
Laurence Sterne,
Guy de Maupassant, among others. At the end of the 19th century, the writer
João do Rio became popular by short stories about the
bohemianism.
Lima Barreto wrote about the former slaves and
nationalism in Brazil, with his most recognized work being
Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma. Examples include: •
India •
Rabindranath Tagore • "The Kabuliwala" • "The Hungry Stone" • "The Wife's Letter" • "The Parrot's Training" • "Punishment" •
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay • "Bindu's Son" • "Abhagi's Heaven" • "Mahesh" • "Ram's Good Lesson" • "Lalu" (3 parts) • "The Husband" •
Premchand • "The Shroud" • "The Cost of Milk" • "Lottery" •
Poland •
Bolesław Prus • "
A Legend of Old Egypt" (1888) •
Eliza Orzeszkowa • "Panna Antonina" (1888) • "W zimowy wieczór" (1888) •
Henryk Sienkiewicz • "The Lighthouse keeper" (1881) • "Charcoal Sketches" (1877) •
Portugal •
Almeida Garrett •
Alexandre Herculano •
Eça de Queiroz •
Russia •
Ivan Turgenev • ''
A Sportsman's Sketches'' •
Fyodor Dostoyevski • "
The Meek One" (1876) • "
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877) •
Leo Tolstoy • "
Ivan the Fool" (1885) • "
How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) • "
Alyosha the Pot" (1905) •
Anton Chekhov • "
The Bet" (1889) • "Ward No. 6" (1892) • "
The Lady with the Dog" (1899) •
Maxim Gorky • "
Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1899) •
United Kingdom •
Thomas Hardy • "
The Three Strangers" (1883), • "
A Mere Interlude" (1885), • "
Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890) •
Rudyard Kipling •
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) •
The Jungle Book (1894) •
Arthur Conan Doyle •
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) –
detective story •
H. G. Wells –
science fiction • "
The Country of the Blind" (1904) •
United States •
Herman Melville •
The Piazza Tales (1856) •
Mark Twain • "
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" •
Henry James • "
The Real Thing" (1892) • "Maud-Evelyn" •
The Beast in the Jungle (1903) •
Kate Chopin •
Stephen Crane 1900–1945 In the United Kingdom, periodicals like
The Strand Magazine and
The Story-Teller contributed to the popularity of the short story. Several authors during this time wrote short stories centered on the devices of satire and humor. One such author, Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of
Saki, wrote
satirical short stories about
Edwardian England.
P. G. Wodehouse published his first collection of comical stories about the valet,
Jeeves, in 1917. Other common genres of short stories during the early to mid 1900s in England were
detective stories and thrillers. Many of these detective stories were written by authors such as
G. K. Chesterton,
Agatha Christie, and
Dorothy L. Sayers.
Graham Greene wrote his collection of short stories,
Twenty-One Stories, between 1929 and 1954. Many of these short stories are classified in the genres of thriller, suspense, or even horror. The European short story movement during this time was not unique to England. In Ireland,
James Joyce published his short story collection
Dubliners in 1914. These stories, written in a more accessible style than his later novels, are based on careful observation of the inhabitants of his birth city. In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile American magazines such as
The Atlantic Monthly, ''
Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and The Bookman published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great and the money paid so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection, Flappers and Philosophers,'' appeared in book form in 1920. Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly suited for shorter fiction. Influenced by the short stories of
Stephen Crane and
Jack London, Hemingway's work "marks a new phase in the history of the short story". The creation and study of the short story as a medium began to emerge as an academic discipline due to
Blanche Colton Williams's "groundbreaking work on structure and analysis of the short story" and her publication of
A Handbook on Short Story Writing (1917), described as "the first practical aid to growing young writers that was put on the market in this country." In
Uruguay,
Horacio Quiroga became one of the most influential short story writers in the Spanish language. With a clear influence from
Edgar Allan Poe, he had a great skill in using the
supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying
mental illness and
hallucinatory states. In India,
Saadat Hasan Manto, the master of the short story in the Urdu language, is revered for his exceptional depth, irony, and sardonic humor. The author of some 250 short stories, radio plays, essays, reminiscences, and a novel, Manto is widely admired for his analyses of violence, bigotry, prejudice, and the relationships between reason and unreason. Combining realism with surrealism and irony, Manto's works, such as the celebrated short story
Toba Tek Singh, are aesthetic masterpieces that continue to give profound insight into the nature of human loss, violence, and devastation. Another famous Urdu writer is
Ismat Chughtai, whose short story, "Lihaaf" (The Quilt), on a lesbian relationship between an upper-class Muslim woman and her maidservant created great controversy following its publication in 1942. Notable examples in the period up to World War II include: •
Bohemia •
Franz Kafka • "
A Hunger Artist" (1922) •
Brazil •
Mário de Andrade •
António de Alcantâra Machado •
Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda (1928) •
Graciliano Ramos •
Carlos Drummond de Andrade •
England •
Virginia Woolf • "
Kew Gardens" (1919) • "Solid Objects" •
W. Somerset Maugham •
V. S. Pritchett •
Evelyn Waugh •
Muriel Spark •
L. P. Hartley •
Arthur C. Clarke • "
Travel by Wire!" (1937) •
Germany •
Thomas Mann •
Hindi •
Jaishankar Prasad •
Japan •
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa •
New Zealand •
Katherine Mansfield • "
The Doll's House" (1922) •
Portugal •
Mário de Sá-Carneiro •
Florbela Espanca •
Fernando Pessoa •
United States •
O. Henry • "
The Ransom of Red Chief", • "
The Cop and the Anthem", • "
The Skylight Room", • "
After Twenty Years", • "
The Last Leaf", • "
A Retrieved Reformation" •
F. Scott Fitzgerald • "
The Ice Palace" • "
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" • "
Absolution" • "
The Rich Boy" •
Ernest Hemingway • "
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1926) • "
Hills Like White Elephants" (1927) • "
The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936) •
William Faulkner •
Go Down, Moses •
Dorothy Parker • "Big Blonde" (1929) •
Isaac Asimov • "
Nightfall"
Since 1945 Following
World War II, the artistic range and numbers of writers of short stories grew significantly. Due in part to frequent contributions from
John O'Hara,
The New Yorker would come to exercise substantial influence as a weekly short story publication for more than half a century.
Shirley Jackson's story, "
The Lottery" (1948), elicited the strongest response in the magazine's history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the 1940s included
John Steinbeck,
Jean Stafford,
Eudora Welty, and
John Cheever, who is best known for
"The Swimmer" (1964), beautifully blending realism and surrealism. Many other American short story writers greatly influenced the evolving form of the short story. For example,
J. D. Salinger's
Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while
Flannery O'Connor's well-known story, "
A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955), reinvigorated the
Southern Gothic style. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s.
Philip Roth and
Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices.
Tillie Olsen's "
I Stand Here Ironing" (1961) adopted a consciously feminist perspective.
James Baldwin's collection,
Going to Meet the Man (1965), told stories of African-American life.
Science fiction stories with a special poetic touch was a genre developed with great popular success by
Ray Bradbury.
Stephen King published many science fiction short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. King's interest is in the supernatural and macabre.
Donald Barthelme and
John Barth produced works in the 1970s that demonstrate the rise of the postmodern short story. While traditionalism maintained a significant influence on the form of the short story,
minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of
Raymond Carver and
Ann Beattie. Carver helped usher in an "extreme minimalist aesthetic" and expand the scope of the short story, as did
Lydia Davis, through her idiosyncratic and laconic style. The
Argentine writer
Jorge Luis Borges is one of the best-known writers of short stories in the
Spanish language. "
The Library of Babel" (1941) and "
The Aleph" (1945) handle difficult subjects like
infinity. Borges won American fame with "
The Garden of Forking Paths", published in the August 1948 issue of ''
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Two of the most representative writers of the Magical realism genre are also widely known Argentine short story writers, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Julio Cortázar. The Nobel laureate author Gabriel García Márquez and the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti are further significant magical realist short story writers from the Hispanic world. In Brazil, João Antonio made a name for himself by writing about poverty and the favelas. Detective literature there was led by Rubem Fonseca. João Guimarães Rosa wrote short stories in the book Sagarana,'' using a complex, experimental language based on tales of oral tradition. The role of the bi-monthly magazine
Desh (first published in 1933) was key in development of the Bengali short story. Two of the most popular detective story writers of Bengali literature are
Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (the creator of
Byomkesh Bakshi) and
Satyajit Ray (the creator of
Feluda). Notable examples in the post–World War II period include: •
Angola •
José Luandino Vieira •
José Eduardo Agualusa •
Bengali •
Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay •
Manik Bandyopadhyay •
Mahasweta Devi •
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay •
Suchitra Bhattacharya •
Ramapada Chowdhury •
Humayun Ahmed •
Brazil •
Clarice Lispector •
Lygia Fagundes Telles •
Adélia Prado •
Dalton Trevisan •
Autran Dourado •
Moacyr Scliar •
Carlos Heitor Cony •
Hilda Hilst •
Caio Fernando Abreu •
Chile •
José Donoso •
Augusto d'Halmar •
Manuel Rojas •
Diamela Eltit •
Alberto Fuguet •
José Baroja •
Alejandro Zambra •
Egypt •
Naguib Mahfouz –
1988 Nobel Prize in Literature winner •
Hindi •
Amrita Pritam •
Dharamvir Bharati •
Bhisham Sahni •
Krishna Sobti •
Nirmal Verma •
Kamleshwar •
Mannu Bhandari •
Harishankar Parsai •
Italy •
Italo Calvino •
Marcovaldo (1963) •
Japan •
Kenzaburō Ōe –
1994 Nobel Prize in Literature winner •
Yukio Mishima •
Haruki Murakami •
Mozambique •
Suleiman Cassamo •
Paulina Chiziane •
Eduardo White •
Mia Couto •
Peru •
Mario Vargas Llosa –
2010 Nobel Prize in Literature winner •
Philippines •
Peter Solis Nery • "Lirio" (1998) • "Candido" (2007) • "Donato Bugtot" (2011) • "Si Padre Olan kag ang Dios" (2013) •
Poland •
Kornel Filipowicz •
Katarzyna Grochola •
Paweł Huelle •
Sławomir Mrożek •
Magdalena Tulli •
Portugal •
Vergílio Ferreira •
Fernando Goncalves Namora •
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen •
José Saramago •
United Kingdom •
Roald Dahl •
Helen Simpson •
Daphne du Maurier • "
The Birds" (1952) • "
Don't Look Now" (1971) •
United States •
Frank O'Connor •
The Lonely Voice •
Wallace Stegner •
John Updike •
Joyce Carol Oates •
Denis Johnson • ''
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