SOURCE: Levy, Andrew. “Poe's Magazine.” In The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story, pp. 10-26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Levy details Edgar Allan Poe's formative influence on the American short story by examining the economic and artistic ideals of his proposed literary magazine.

Naming is how the world enlarges itself. We might try the same with the thing at hand, calling it poe, for instance. “Me, I write poes,” one could say.

Russell Banks, “Toward a New Form,” Sudden Fiction, ed. Shapard and Thomas (1986) 245.

Any history of the development of the short story in America must begin with Edgar Allan Poe's review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales in 1842. This is not because Poe necessarily invented the short story; but rather, because later generations of short story writers, editors, and students invented Poe as the founder of the genre. From perhaps 1885 to 1950, Poe's...