Just before the Civil War a revivifying breath came to American fiction through the new Atlantic Monthly (1857) under the editor ship of James Russell Lowell. Lowell himself wrote no fiction but he had positive convictions as to the nature and demands of this literary form. He believed in the short story as a dignified piece of art ; during his editorship of the magazine there was an average of three stories in every number. And he demanded actuality,— he preferred tales of humble life with characters from the Hosea Biglow area of society. As a result his leading contributor was Rose Terry Cooke, who put into short fiction (eight stories in the first year of the magazine) the first actually realistic studies of New England rural life. Other contributors were Rebecca Hard ing, whose "Life in the Iron Mills" was as grim a piece of realism as may be found in American literature, and Edward Everett Hale, who added a whimsical lightness of touch to his tales that gave them a distinction of their own. His tale, The Man Without a Country, has become an American classic.
The Civil War was followed by an expansion period. Railroads were pushed in all directions and by the end of the decade of the '6os the first line had been completed across the continent into California. The telegraph had annihilated distance, and provincial ism was everywhere breaking down. The result was a new dis covery of America—by Americans themselves. Bret Harte was the pioneer in the new period. From the California which had become to the world almost a fabulous area, came in 1868 a new and startling type of short story, highly picturesque, wrought with dramatic art, furnished with characters after the Dickens model, and though really romantic, so told as to suggest the barest realism. The "Luck of Roaring Camp" stories mark the beginning of a new period in the history of the short story. The fame of such exqui site pieces of art as "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" swept over America and then over England like a prairie fire. They advertised the short-story form enormously. Soon "local colour" tales were coming in from every picturesque area in America. Mark Twain came in from Nevada and the Comstock Lode with "The Jumping Frog" extravaganza, from New Orleans George W. Cable sent his "Old Creole Days" tales, from the Lake country Constance Fenimore Woolson contributed her "Castle Nowhere" tales. Then from New England came Sarah Orne Jewett's and later Mary Wilkins Freeman's stories, from Tennessee Mary N. Murfree's studies of the Great Smoky mountains signed with the pen name "Charles Egbert Craddock," from Georgia came the inimitable Uncle Remus folk-lore stories by Joel Chandler Harris. "Local colour" swept into the magazines in a veritable flood. The high tide came in the mid '8os, when Thomas Nelson Page's "Marse Chan," written wholly in negro dialect, appeared in the Century Magazine.
Lightness and humour and finesse were brought to the short story by Frank Stockton, whose extravaganzas, like "The Trans ferred Ghost" and "Negative Gravity," done with verisimilitude— outrageous impossibilities rendered seemingly possible and even probable—are unique. His story The Lady or the Tiger? with
its ingenious ending, became, perhaps, the most famous story of its period. Its influence was surprising and far-reaching. It impelled Brander Matthews to write his suggestive article The Philosophy of the Short-Story, in which he suggested that since the French term conte was not available for the new form the term Short Story should be written with a capital and hyphenated to distin guish it from the story that was merely short. It also awakened Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of Puck, who wrote his Short Sixes series of tales with a mastery of art that showed the larger possi bilities of the short-story form.
Then with the '9os came the era of the handbooks, a veritable outpouring of text-books formulating short-story art, collections of specimens, and outlines for correspondence courses. A study of the art of short-story writing was soon introduced everywhere into the courses of high schools and colleges. Then had come the O'Brien annual with specimens of the best product of the year, to be followed by the 0. Henry Society annual. With the '9os came also an increasing output of stories of every variety. Magazines were cheapened and multiplied and their prosperity rendered them able to pay high prices for short-story contributions. The decade saw the beginnings of the short-story work of Hamlin Garland, whose Main Travelled Roads volume is distinctive, the first works of James Lane Allen, Richard Harding Davis, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Alice Brown, Ambrose Bierce and a host of others. Jack London.—With the opening of the new century came two creators who were able to deflect the current of the short story into new channels, Jack London and Sydney Porter. London, a native of California, an adventurer, a sailor with the sealing fleet, a tramp, a miner in Alaska in the first days of the gold rush, an explorer in his own yacht of the South Seas, gave first of all Alaska tales, The Call of the Wild, episodes in the life of a super dog of the North, and when that gold lode was exhausted, wild adventure tales of the cannibal seas. He wrote with colour, exag geration, poetic abandon, with movement always and romantic atmosphere, and he gave always the sense of actuality, the impres sion that he himself had been present and that this was a part of his own life.
0. Henry.—Sydney Porter, who wrote under the pen-name "0. Henry," was also an adventurer,—a ranchman in Texas, a fugitive in South America, an inmate of the Ohio State prison, a reporter on a New York newspaper. He was a humorist, an entertainer, a man with a bag of literary tricks which he handled most dexter ously, and withal he was gifted with a style which at times is ex quisite, and with a vocabulary that is worth one's study. His tales are padded with slang, with surprises within surprises, with out rageous comparisons, and antitheses—everywhere the unexpected. Enormous was their popularity. Sets of his books were sold by the hundreds of thousands. His influence was such that for a time it swung the short story almost wholly to manner rather than to matter.
The waning of the 0. Henry influence was followed by a reign of short-story lawlessness—deliberate revolt. The younger group which in 1929 was in the fullness of its creative powers, seems to be striving for originality, for strangeness, for a breaking away from the conventions so long in force. With the new century had come realism and disillusion in increasing power until they have become a ruling force. We can only say that short-story making and teaching have become veritable national industries and the output seems to be increasing. (F. L. PA.)