A History of American Literature Since 1870

by Fred Lewis Pattee

The short story in its later form dates from Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Harte added reality, sharpness of outline, vividness of setting, vigor of characterization. The new period demanded actuality. The writer must speak with authority; he must have been a part of what he describes; he must have seen with his own eyes and he must reproduce with a verisimilitude that grips the reader and hastens him on as if he himself were a participant in the action. There must be at every point sense of actuality, and, moreover, strangeness—new and unheard-of types of humanity, uncouth dialects, peculiar environments. It was far more concentrated than the mid-century work, but it was much more given to general description and background effects and impressionistic characterization.

In the mid-eighties came the perfecting of the form, the molding of the short story into a finished work of art. Now was demanded compression, nervous rapidity of movement, sharpness of characterization, singleness of impression, culmination, finesse—a studied artistry that may be compared with even the best work of the French school of the same period. Stories like those of Aldrich, Stockton, Bunner, Garland, Allen, Bierce, Grace King, Mrs. Chopin, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris, from the standpoint of mere art at least, come near to perfection.

The decline of the short story, its degeneration into a journalistic form, the substitution all too often of smartness, paradox, sensation, for truth—all this is a modern instance outside the limits prescribed for our study.

I

After Harte and the early local-colorists the next to develop the short story was Frank R. Stockton. No writer of the period has been more variously estimated and labeled. By some critics he has been rated as a mere humorist, by others as a novelist, by still others as a writer of whimsicalities in a class by himself.

It is undoubtedly true that his personality was so interfused with his writings that the generation who knew and loved him were too kind in their judgments. Behind his every story they saw the genial, whimsical creator and they laughed even before they began to read. But a new generation has arrived to whom Stockton is but a name and a set of books, and it is becoming more and more evident now that very much that he wrote was ephemeral. To this generation he is known as the author of a single short story, or perhaps three or four short stories, of a type that has its own peculiar flavor.

Stockton was born in Philadelphia in 1834, was educated in the high school there, and then, at the request of his father, learned the trade of wood engraving. But his inclinations were literary, and he was soon an editorial worker on his brother's newspaper. Later he joined the staff of Hearth and Home in New York, then became connected with the new Scribner's Monthly, and finally became assistant editor of St. Nicholas.

The wide popularity of his stories induced him at length to withdraw from editorial work to devote his whole time to his writings. He became exceedingly productive: after his fiftieth year he published no fewer than thirty volumes.

To understand Stockton's contribution to the period one must bear in mind that he adopted early the juvenile story as his form of expression, and that his first book, Ting-a-ling Stories, appeared four years after Alice in Wonderland. When, at the age of forty-eight he gained general recognition with his The Lady, or the Tiger? he had published nine books, eight of them juveniles. The fact is important. He approached literature by the Wonderland gate and he never wandered far from that magic entrance. After his short stories had made him famous he continued to write juveniles, adapting them, however, to his new audience of adult readers. He may be summed up as a maker of grown-up juveniles, a teller, as it were, of the adventures of an adult Alice in Wonderland.

All of his distinctive work was short. Rudder Grange, which first made him at all known, was a series of sketches, the humorous adventures of a newly married couple, the humor consisting largely of incongruous situations. Even his so-called novels, like The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine and its sequel The Dusantes, are but a series of episodes joined together as loosely as Alice's well-known adventures. Plot there is really none. Characterization, however, there is to a degree: the two women do carry their provincial Yankee personalities and the atmosphere of their little home village into whatever amazing environment they may find themselves, but one can not say more.