Masterpieces of American Literature
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On The Short Tale

One of literature's strongest proponent for the development of short fiction.

                                                                                  On Style and Purpose  in the Short Story

  (From a letter to Henry Brevoort, December 11, 1824)

                Fancy much of what I value myself upon in writing, escapes the observation of the great mass of my readers, who are intent more upon the story than the way in which it is told.  For my part, I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.  It is the play of thought, and sentiment, and language; the weaving in of characters, lightly, yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing through the whole, these are among what I aim at, and upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed.  I have preferred adopting the mode of sketches and short tales rather than long works, be cause I choose to take a line of writing peculiar to myself, rather than fall into the manner or school of any other writer; and there is a constant activity of thought and a nicety of execution required in writings of the kind, more than the world appears to imagine. It is comparatively easy to swell a story to any size when you have once the scheme and the characters in your mind; the mere interest of the story, too, carries the reader on through pages and pages of careless writing, and the author may often be dull for half a volume at a time, if he has some striking scene at the end of it; but in these shorter writings, every page must have its merit.  The author must be continually piquant; woe to him if he makes an awkward sentence or writes a stupid page; the critics are sure to pounce upon it.  Yet if he succeed, the very variety and piquancy of his writings -- nay, their very brevity, make them frequently recurred to, and when the mere interest of the story is exhausted, he begins to get credit for his touches of pathos or humor, his points of wit or turns of language.  I give these as some of the reasons that have induced me to keep on thus far in the way I had opened for myself.....

(From the author's preface to  Tales of a Traveller, 1824.)

                As I know this to be a story-telling and a story-reading age, and that the world is fond of being taught by apologue, I have digested the instruction I would convey into a number of tales.  They may not possess the power of amusement, which the tales told by many of my contemporaries possess; but then I value myself on the sound moral which each of them contains.  This may not be apparent at first, but the reader will be sure to find it out in the end.  I am for curing the world by gentle alternatives, not by violent doses; indeed, the patient should never be conscious that he is taking a dose.  I have learnt this much from experience under the hands of the worthy Hippocrates of Mentz.

            I am not, therefore, for those barefaced tales which carry their moral on the surface, staring one in the face; they are enough to deter the squeamish reader.  On the contrary, I have often hid my moral from sight, and disguised it as much as possible by sweets and spices, so that while the simple reader is listening with open mouth to a ghost or a love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down his throat, and he never the wiser for the fraud . . . .

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  • Home
    • What is STORY
    • The Elements of Fiction
    • What Is A Short Story
    • Literary Theory Guide
  • Lit. 214
    • Class Presentations
  • Colonial Period
    • Native American >
      • Red Jacket's Speech
      • Story Collections
      • Lyrics, Poems and Chants
    • Spanish Explorers
    • Early Colonial >
      • New England Primer
      • Anne Bradstreet
      • Mary Rowlandson
      • John Winthrop
      • John Smith
      • Colonial Song Lyrics
    • Colonial and Revolutionary >
      • Readings >
        • Ben Franklin >
          • Advice on the Choice of a Mistress
          • Excerpts from The Autobiography
          • A Tale
        • Phyllis Wheatly >
          • Poems
        • Thomas Paine >
          • Common Sense
        • Philip Freneau >
          • Freneau Poems
        • Thomas Jefferson >
          • Writings
        • Jupiter Hammon >
          • An Evening Thought
      • Lyrics
  • Romantic Period
    • Elements of American Romanticism
    • Authors >
      • Washington Irving >
        • Irving's Place >
          • Irving's Place2
        • Irving on the Tale
        • Rip Van Winkle
        • Rip 2
        • Rip 3
        • Poetry
      • James Fenimore Cooper >
        • LOTH Silent Movie
        • Chapter 32
        • Chapter 32 B
      • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >
        • Selected Poems
      • Ralph Waldo Emerson >
        • Selected Writings
        • Transcendentalism
      • Edgar Allen Poe >
        • Poe's Approach to Fiction
        • Life of Poe
        • Selected Poems
        • "The Raven"
        • The Black Cat
        • The Tell-Tale Heart
      • William Cullen Bryant >
        • Bryants Poems
      • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow >
        • Selected Poetry
      • Margaret Fuller
      • Fanny Fern
      • Herman Melville >
        • Moby Dick
      • Nathaniel Hawthorne >
        • Scarlett Letter Excepts
        • Young Goodman Brown
      • C. Clement Moore
    • Lyrics >
      • Folk / Gospel
      • Parlor Music
      • Music Hall
      • Stephen Foster >
        • Music
      • George Root
  • Civil War Period
    • 1850 - 1861 >
      • Harriet Anne Jacobs
      • Francis Harper
      • Frederick Douglass
      • Songs of Protest, Freedom, Sadness
    • 1861 - 1866 >
      • Julie Ward Howe
      • Emily Dickinson
      • Walt Whitman >
        • Excerpts
      • Abraham Lincoln
      • Louisa May Alcott
      • Misc. Poets
      • Warriors & Memoirs
    • Civil War Songs