Genre

Short Fiction

Also Known As Short Story

Short, Lyric and Nonfiction Forms

Prose fiction built to be read in a single sitting, typically compressing its narrative to a single incident, character or effect rather than the novel's extended development. Edgar Allan Poe's own theorizing of the form in the 1840s, arguing that a short story should be built entirely toward one unified effect, is frequently cited as the genre's first sustained critical statement, though short prose narrative forms, the fable, the parable, the folk tale, long predate that theorizing across nearly every literary tradition. The form's modern prestige rests heavily on writers including Chekhov, Maupassant and, in the twentieth century, a wide range of authors for whom the short story rather than the novel was the primary vehicle.

Facts

Place of Origin

No fixed birthplace; the short story descends from ancient oral storytelling traditions worldwide (legends, myths, folk tales, fables), with the modern form developing in the early 19th century in Europe and the United States. 1

Notable Example

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories 2

Defining Trait

A work of prose fiction that can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents. 2

Learn More

The Theory Behind the Single Sitting

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Edgar Allan Poe is better known on this atlas for Gothic horror and for inventing the detective story than for literary theory, but his 1846 essay The Philosophy of Composition did something few writers attempt: it set out, in his own words, the design principle behind a form that had never had one written down. Poe argued that a short prose narrative should be built entirely toward a single, unified effect, every incident, every sentence chosen because it serves that one effect rather than because the plot happens to require it, and that the whole should be readable in one sitting so that no outside interruption could break the effect before it lands. The claim reached beyond his own fiction; it became, and has stayed, one of the most frequently cited critical statements about what a short story is for, distinguishing it from the novel not simply by length but by design. Poe's own stories, from the detective puzzle of The Murders in the Rue Morgue to his Gothic tales, are commonly read as demonstrations of the same principle his criticism named.

A Form Older Than Its Own Theory

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Poe gave the short story its first sustained theory in the 1840s, but the form he was theorizing had been practiced for millennia before he named its principle. Short prose narrative built around a single incident, character or effect predates any critical statement about it by a very wide margin, running through the fable, the parable and the folk tale across nearly every literary tradition this atlas covers, forms that needed no theory of unified effect to know instinctively how much a short telling could carry. What Poe's theorizing gave the form was not its existence but its modern prestige as a distinct literary category worth taking as seriously as the novel, a prestige the nineteenth and twentieth centuries built on directly. Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant, writing in Russian and French respectively, are usually named as the writers who proved a short story could carry the same psychological and artistic weight as a novel within a fraction of the space, and by the twentieth century a wide range of writers had made the short story, not the novel, their primary vehicle, treating Poe's single-effect principle less as a rule to follow than as the first attempt to explain what the form had always been doing.

FAQs

Is the short story a modern invention?

The modern written form dates from the early nineteenth century, but short narratives are among the oldest types of literature.

Only in its modern form. Short narratives such as legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables and anecdotes existed in various ancient communities around the world, which makes the short story one of the oldest types of literature. The modern short story, a piece of written prose fiction that focuses on a self-contained incident or linked incidents and is meant to evoke a single effect or mood, developed in the early nineteenth century.

Connections

Associated With

New Culture Movement

Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman marked the movement's founding turn to vernacular short fiction.

Encompasses Form

Chuanqi

Flash Fiction

The Frame Narrative

The frame narrative organizes collections of shorter tales, so it most directly encloses short fiction, though it also nests within longer prose works.

Source Frame Story (Wikipedia)

Features Author

The Gift of the Magi

Source Wikipedia: The Gift of the Magi

The Hour of the Star

Source The Hour of the Star (Wikipedia)

The Lady with the Dog

Source Wikipedia: The Lady with the Dog

The Lottery (short story)

Source The Lottery (Wikipedia)

The Necklace

Source Wikipedia: The Necklace

The Nose (Gogol)

Source Wikipedia: The Nose (Gogol short story)

The Old Man and the Sea

Source Wikipedia: The Old Man and the Sea

The Overcoat

Source Wikipedia: The Overcoat

The Prisoner of the Caucasus

Source The Prisoner of the Caucasus (story) (Wikipedia)

The Queen of Spades

Source The Queen of Spades (story) (Wikipedia)

The Virgin and the Gypsy

Source The Virgin and the Gypsy (Wikipedia)

The Yellow Wallpaper

Source Wikipedia: The Yellow Wallpaper

Theodore Sturgeon

Source Wikipedia: Theodore Sturgeon

Thomas Mann

Source Wikipedia: Thomas Mann

Viy

Source Viy (story) (Wikipedia)

W. Somerset Maugham

Source Wikipedia: W. Somerset Maugham

William Faulkner

Source Wikipedia: William Faulkner

Yukio Mishima

Source Wikipedia: Yukio Mishima

Showing 51 to 68 of 68 in Features Author, page 2 of 2.

Long-Form Articles

A Form Older Than Its Own Theory

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Theory Behind the Single Sitting

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

In the Other Atlases

Originated In

Europe

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source The Norton Anthology of World Literaturetier 1

Sources

1. Short Story (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Lead section

Quote, Lead section

The short story is one of the oldest types of literature and has existed in the form of legends, mythic tales, folk tales, fairy tales, tall tales, fables, and anecdotes in various ancient communities around the world. The modern short story developed in the early 19th century.