1. THE SHORT STORY
Literary genre
Fictional narrative prose

2. ORIGINS EARLY PRECURSORS: Anecdotes Parables Fables Folk tales
Fairy tales

3. Roots in oral tradition
Emerged as a genre in the early 19th century
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839) and Nathaniel Hawthorne’sTwice Told Tales (1842) were early collections of short stories

4. The growth of print magazines and journals in the late 19th century created a strong market demand for short fiction between 3,000 and 15,000 words in length, esp. in the United States
American literary form (arguable)

5. CHARACTERISTICS Single incident Single plot Single setting
Few characters
A short period of time
Character experiences an epiphany

6. May or may not follow dramatic structure

7. Exact characteristics depend on author
Realistic
Read in one sitting
No less than 1000 words
No longer than 20,000 words