Nineteenth Century American Short Stories

"There is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art - the limit of a single sitting.' So Edgar Allan Poe set the boundaries for imaginative writing and laid the foundation for the serious contemplation and criticism of a new genre: the American short story. Emerging in the 'American Renaissance' of the 1850s from the pens of America's literary greats - Hawthorne, Melville, Irving, Twain - as well as from the country's lesser-known writers, these 'tales', as Poe called them, reflect the myriad forms of the American experience. The genteel culture of colonial New England, the harsh struggle of pioneers on the open plain and the lawless frontiers of the 'wild west' are recorded in startling regional realism, provocative social commentary and incisive psychological study. These stories, which follow the course of American history through the Civil War and the 'Gilded Age' to the turn of the century, are a tribute to the burgeoning artistic expression of