The Short Story in English

From the Introduction.

I PROPOSE in the following pages to discuss the practice of the short story in English.

The vagueness of the term "short story" is apparent. No less apparent is the existence, in every literature and period, of groups of narratives which we can call by no other name. The literatures of ancient Greece, of Buddhistic India, of medieval France and Arabia—for each of them readers will bring to mind a well-marked, well-recognized genre which to-day we should put under the s...