Austen
Balzac
Beaconsfield
Blackmore
Borrow
Brontë
Bunyan
Caine
Cervantes
Chateaubriand
Cooper
Daudet
Defoe
Dickens
Doyle
Dumas
Fénelon
Feuillet
Fielding
Gaskell
Goldsmith
Hugo
Kingsley
Le Sage
Lever
Lytton
Macdonald
Manzoni
Meredith
Reade
Richardson
Scott
Shorthouse
Sienkiewicz
Stowe
Thackeray
Turgenieff
Zola
The short story, as distinct from a story that is short, is a nineteenth-century development in fiction. During the last hundred years the magazines grew so rapidly in numbers and circulation that they could not depend entirely on continued stories; they had to have tales that would be complete in one number, which could be read at one sitting. The demand brought the needed solution, a story which instead of length, with intricate action and complex studies of personality, supplied rapid action, brilliantly imaginative description, and a terse portrayal of character. Scenes, persons, and events were stamped immediately on the reader's mind; the effect desired by the writer was attained by force and bold decision. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first to excel in this field, utilizing his critical powers as well as sheer inspiration to meet the situation.
The variations in style and manner are as manifold in the short story as in the novel. Boccaccio, "The Arabian Nights," French Literature, and the "Gesta Romanorum" show the work of the Middle Ages, from mere anecdote with a moral tagged on, in the "Gesta," to the graceful prose poem of "Aucassin and Nicolete." Barrie, Brown, and Hawthorne do little more than draw quiet sketches of simple life, while Björnson, Eliot, Hardy, Harte, Irving, Kipling, Macleod, Maupassant, Stevenson, and Tolstoi deal powerfully with situations that bring home to us the force of fate which lurks hidden in petty incidents. Aldrich, Collins, Crawford, Hale, and Watson have all used this type of fiction effectively. Indeed, Hale's "Man Without a Country" drives home the idea of patriotism so vigorously that Italy recently issued a translation in an edition of a million copies for distribution to her army.
HISTORY
Like poetry and fiction, history emerges from the darkness of the unknown ages, at first no more than a boastful record of slaughter and usurpation, such as shows through the gloss and splendor of epic poetry. The sagas in "Norse Literature," the crisp record of invasion and conquest by Cæsar, and that of Josephus on the Roman conquest of the Jews are all of this type, a chronicle by an eyewitness of the succession of deeds that made up some event in a nation's life.
An improvement came with Herodotus in ancient times and again with Froissart in the Middle Ages. Both of these historians added zest to their tale by including some account of the principal personages as well as picturesque, well-drawn pictures of the scene. In other words, they filled in the background of their pictures, their wars were waged by people with definite personalities and in a country with certain individual features and peculiarities.
From this method to the modern scientific style was a further advance. It is now understood that we must perceive the growth of a nation, its social changes, its increase of intellectual as well as physical power, its innermost secrets of success or failure. Thucydides, the Greek historian, and Tacitus, the Roman, felt something of this and have left us far more than a mere list of battles and rulers. Gibbon, in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and later still, Guizot, Mommsen, and Ferrero, have carried on the work of analyzing the complex mysteries of history and civilization and have brought it to its highest development. The more stirring visions of heroism and kingly dominion have been replaced by pages in which not an emperor but a nation is born, passes through childhood to maturity and wisdom, succumbs to disease or an enemy's murderous attacks, and perishes.