This is a concise yet comprehensive treatment of the American short story that includes an historical overview of the topic as well as discussion of notable American authors and individual stories, from Benjamin Franklin's "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker" in 1747 to "The Joy Luck Club".
* Includes a selection of writers chosen not only for their contributions of individual stories but for bodies of work that advanced the boundaries of short fiction, including Washington Irving, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Jamaica Kincaid, and Tim O'Brien
* Addresses the ways in which American oral storytelling and other narrative traditions were integral to the formation and flourishing of the short story genre
* Written in accessible and engaging prose for students at all levels by a renowned literary scholar to illuminate an important genre that has received short shrift in scholarly literature of the last century
* Includes a glossary defining the most common terms used in literary history and in critical discussions of fiction, and a bibliography of works for further study

Preface vii
Part 1 Introduction 1
Part 2 Historical Overview of the American Short Story 9
The American Story to Washington Irving 12
The Age of Romanticism 20
Realism and Naturalism 26
American Modernism 39
The Contemporary American Short Story 46
Part 3 Notable Authors of American Short Stories 55
Washington Irving 57
Edgar Allan Poe 62
Nathaniel Hawthorne 67
Herman Melville 71
Mark Twain 76
Bret Harte 82
Henry James 86
Kate Chopin 91
Stephen Crane 96
O. Henry 101
Sarah Orne Jewett 105
Charles W. Chesnutt 109
Willa Cather 115
F. Scott Fitzgerald 120
Ernest Hemingway 126
John Steinbeck 132
William Faulkner 139
Jamaica Kincaid 144
Tim O'Brien 150
Louise Erdrich 156
Part 4 Great American Short Stories 163
Benjamin Franklin, "The Speech of Polly Baker" 165
Ruri Colla, "The Story of the Captain's Wife and an Aged Woman" 168
Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" 172
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown" 177
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado" 180
Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" 184
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "The Two Offers" 189
Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion's Paw" 192
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" 196
Henry James, "The Real Thing" 202
Kate Chopin, "Désirée's Baby" 206
Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" 210
Stephen Crane, "The Blue Hotel" 214
Frank Norris, "A Deal in Wheat" 218
Edith Wharton, "The Other Two" 222
Willa Cather, "A Wagner Matinée" 226
Jack London, "To Build a Fire" 230
Jean Toomer, "Blood-Burning Moon" 233
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" 236
Ernest Hemingway, "Indian Camp" 241
John Steinbeck, "The Chrysanthemums" 245
Eudora Welty, "Petrified Man" 249
William Faulkner, "Barn Burning" 253
Flannery O'Connor, "The River" 257
Tillie Olsen, "Help Her to Believe" ["I Stand Here Ironing"] 261
Raymond Carver, "Cathedral" 265
Louise Erdrich, "The Red Convertible" 269
Susan Minot, "Hiding" 273
Amy Tan, "The Joy Luck Club" 277
Tim O'Brien, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" 281
Jamaica Kincaid, "Columbus in Chains" 285
Judith Cofer, "Nada" 289
A Glossary for the Study of the American Short Story 293
Selected Books for Further Study of the American Short Story 303
Index 307

James Nagel is the Eidson Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia and a Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College, USA. He is President of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story and Former President of the International Ernest Hemingway Society. Early in his career he founded the scholarly journal Studies in American Fiction and the widely influential series Critical Essays on American Literature, which published 156 volumes of scholarship. Among his twenty-three books are Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism (1980), Hemingway in Love and War (1989, which was made into a Hollywood film starring Sandra Bullock), The Contemporary American Short-Story Cycle (2001), Anthology of The American Short Story (2007), The Blackwell Companion to the American Short Story (Wiley Blackwell, 2010), and Race and Culture in Stories of New Orleans (2014). He has been a Fulbright Professor as well as a Rockefeller Fellow. He has published some eighty articles in the field and lectured on American literature in fifteen countries.