SOURCE: Pattee, Fred Lewis. “The Discovery of the ‘Short-Story.’” In The Development of the American Short Story: An Historical Survey, pp. 291-306. New York: Harper, 1923.

In the following excerpt, Pattee explores the work of several notable American short-story writers of the late nineteenth century, including Brander Matthews, W. D. Howells, Frank R. Stockton, Henry Cuyler Bunner, and Ambrose Bierce.

I

The term “short story” (hyphenated as Matthews advised, or unhyphenated) as used to designate an independent literary form and not “a story that is merely short,” is a new addition to critical terminology, as recent, indeed, as the eighteen-eighties. Irving wrote “sketches” and “tales.” Poe travestied the Blackwood's type of tale under the title, “How to Write a Blackwood Article.” The North American Review in 1822 discussed Dana's The Idle Man and similar story collections in a critique entitled “Essay Writing.” Poe and Hawthorne wrote “tales”—Tales of the...