The Short-story | Page 2

something new in plot,
point, outcome, or character. (See Introduction III for a discussion of
these terms.) Ingenuity suggests cleverness in handling the theme. The
short-story also is impressionistic because it leaves to the reader the
reconstruction from hints of much of the setting and details.
[Footnote 1: The Philosophy of the Short-Story in Pen and Ink, page 72.
(Longmans, Green & Co., 1888.)]
[Footnote 2: Ibid.]
[Footnote 3: Materials of Fiction, page 175. (Doubleday, Page & Co.,
1912.)]
Mr. Hamilton has also constructed another useful definition. He says:
"The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with the
greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost
emphasis."[4]
[Footnote 4: Materials of Fiction, page 173. (Doubleday, Page & Co.,

1912.)]
However, years before, in 1842, in his celebrated review of
Hawthorne's Tales[5] Edgar Allan Poe had laid down the same theory,
in which he emphasizes what he elsewhere calls, after Schlegel, the
unity or totality of interest, i.e. unity of impression, effect, and
economy. Stevenson, too, has written critically of the short-story,
laying stress on this essential unity, pointing out how each effect leads
to the next, and how the end is part of the beginning.[6]
[Footnote 5: Graham's Magazine, May, 1842.]
[Footnote 6: Vailima Letters, I, page 147.]
America may justly lay claim to this new species of short narrative.
Beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century there had begun to
appear in this country stories showing variations from the English type
of story which "still bore upon it marks of its origin; it was either a hard,
formal, didactic treatise, derived from the moral apologue or fable; or it
was a sentimental love-tale derived from the artificial love-romance
that followed the romance of chivalry."[7] The first one to stand out
prominently is Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, which was
published in 1820. This story, while more leisurely and less condensed
than the completely developed form of the short-story, had the
important element of humor, as well as freshness, grace, and restraint,
nothing being said that should not be said.
[Footnote 7: Krapp's Irving's Tales of a Traveller, etc. Introduction.
(Scott, Foresman & Co.)]
The next writer in the order of development is Edgar Allan Poe, whose
Berenice appeared in 1835. With it the short-story took definite form.
Poe's contribution is structure and technique; that is, he definitely
introduced the characteristics noted in the definition--unity,
compression, originality, and ingenuity. With almost mathematical
precision he sets out to obtain an effect. To quote from his
before-mentioned review of Hawthorne his own words which are so
definite as almost to compose a formula of his way of writing a

short-story and are so thoughtful as to be nearly the summary of any
discussion of the subject: "A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale.
If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents;
but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single
effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents--he then
combines such events--as may best aid him in establishing this
preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the
out-bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the
whole composition there should be no word written of which the
tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one preëstablished design. And
by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted
which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art
a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been
presented unblemished because undisturbed; and this is an end
unattainable by the novel." It is to be noted that Poe roused interest in
his effect by the method of suspense, that is, by holding back the
solution of the plot, by putting off telling what the reader wants to
know, though he continually aggravates the desire to know by constant
hints, the full significance of which is only realized when the story is
done. His stories are of two main classes: what have been called stories
of "impressionistic terror," that is, stories of great fear induced in a
character by a mass of rather vague and unusual incidents, such as The
Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and The Pit and the Pendulum
(1843); and stories of "ratiocination," that is, of the ingenious thinking
out of a problem, as The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (1843). In the latter
type he is the originator of the detective story.
The writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne exhibit the next stage of
development. While lacking some of the technical excellence of Poe by
often not knowing how to begin or how to end a story, by sacrificing
economy or compression, yet he