In the following excerpt, Harris catalogues the prominent short story writers of the period 1830 to 1880, summarizing their representative works, and concludes with an overview of English and Irish Aesthetic fiction of the late nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Marler asserts that the development of American short fiction in the 1850s is evidenced by the decline of the “tale” and the ascent of the “short story,” a significant change that was particularly discernible in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.

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.

In the following essay, Taylor recounts the nineteenth-century shift in the French conte from the aesthetic compositions of Mérimée, Gautier, and Flaubert to the lucid simplicity of Maupassant's short stories.

In the following essay, Engstrom defines the French short story (conte), and chronicles early works in this genre by Mérimée, Balzac, and Gautier.

In the following essay, Baldwin probes the economic and social factors that contributed to the slow development of the short story in nineteenth-century Britain.

In the following excerpt from the introduction to his collection of American short fiction, Fagin encapsulates the nineteenth-century development of the short story in the United States, detailing a variety of social, economic, and literary influences on the form.

In the following essay, Baldick examines several short British Gothic tales of the nineteenth century, focusing on the theme of family degeneration in these works.

In the following essay, Koppelman documents the generally neglected tradition of short fiction written by American women in the nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Hanson argues that female short-story writers of the late nineteenth century reoriented the conventional narrative construction of the feminine.

In the following excerpt, Sachs considers the crystallization of the modern short story in French literature around 1830.

In the following excerpt, George focuses on the formal transformation of the French conte into the modern short story in the first half of the nineteenth century.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1885, Matthews makes distinctions between the formal qualities of the short story and those of the novel, highlighting the ingenuity, compression, and overall “unity of impression” of the short story.

In the following excerpt, Severino considers the short fictional writings of Machado de Assis and Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, highlighting developments in the Brazilian short story from the late nineteenth century to the early Modernist period.