History of the Short Story: Poe, Hawthorne & Their Impact

While the short story was invented in the U.S., it is actually rooted in oral traditions that began before written language existed. Oral storytelling and narratives were not only entertaining, but they provided explanations in a time when many concepts were misunderstood. These stories served their purposes in many different ways:

• to explain how things came to be (myths & legends)

• were a way to record parts of history and retain important information (epics, ballads, and sagas)

• served as a method for teaching moral behavior (parables & fables)

When humans began writing, storytelling then became even more complex and involved, as writers could delve into many different areas of society and life.

When the first Americans began to settle in the states, time for reading was a luxury. There were not as many publishers in the U.S. as there were in Europe and in order for American writers to get published, they had to condense their work into short, more concise pieces. Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are known as some of the first short story authors. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, short stories usually "consist of prose works of fiction under 10,000 words, differing from a novel, in that they are shorter and less elaborate." Usually, short stories are even more condensed; commonly up to 1,200 words.  The term "short story" was first mentioned in print in Harper's Magazine in 1887, in the form of "short story writing."

In 1842, Hawthorne released a book of stories called Twice Told Tales. Poe reviewed and praised the book, saying that Hawthorne had set the foundation for a new American literary form. Poe's criteria for this form consisted of two elements: 

• Everything in the story contributed to a singular effect

• They were short enough to finish reading in one sitting

In 1901, Brander Matthews expanded Poe's definition, saying that a short story was a story with 1) a single character, 2) engaged in a single event, 3) resulting in a single emotion for the reader.

An old joke has an English teacher telling a class that the five requisites to a good short story are "brevity, a religious reference, a sexual reference, some association with society, and an illustration of modesty." The next day a student handed in a story that read in full: "My God!" said the duchess. "Take your hand off my knee!"