High School English · Course
American Short Stories
Stories short enough to read in one sitting, studied one writer at a time.
For most of the 1800s and early 1900s, Americans met new fiction in magazines and newspapers, not in books. A story had to fit in a few pages, hold a reader on a streetcar or at the kitchen table, and end before the next column began. Out of those limits came one of the forms American writers made their own.
This course reads that form writer by writer, from Washington Irving’s Catskill Mountains to Jack London’s frozen Yukon. Each unit has a short life story, guides to the stories, the craft ideas they teach, a game, a quiz and questions for class.
What Makes a Short Story?
A short story is prose fiction that can usually be read in a single sitting. It is built around one incident, or a few linked ones, and aims at one effect or mood. That last idea comes from Edgar Allan Poe. Reviewing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales in Graham’s Magazine in 1842, Poe argued that a writer should first decide on “a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out,” then invent the events that produce it. He also set a length: “the short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal.”
Poe’s point was that a story read at one sitting can work on the reader without a break. A novel is put down and picked up again; a short story holds you from the first sentence to the last. “The unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest importance,” he wrote.
Where it started
Washington Irving wrote some of the first short stories of American origin: “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), both in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which came out in parts in 1819 and 1820.
Why it grew
In the second half of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. Writers could earn a living story by story.
What to look for
- Compression: few characters, one main conflict, little backstory.
- A turning point: the moment the situation changes for good.
- The ending: a twist, a quiet realization, or a hard fact that will not change.
- Place: many American stories are rooted in one region and its speech.
Units
In order of the writers’ birth years. Units 1 to 4 are ready now; the Jack London unit is being written.
Unit 2 · 1783–1859
Washington Irving: Legends of the Hudson
“Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”: his life and pen names, frame narrators and tall tales, folklore sources, a reading game and a quiz.
Unit 3 · 1836–1902
Bret Harte and Local Color
“The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “The Luck of Roaring Camp”: Gold Rush gamblers and miners, local color and dialect, the Twain friendship, a reading game and a quiz.
Unit 4 · 1850–1904
Kate Chopin: Irony and the Inner Life
An hour of secret freedom and a letter that turns a marriage upside down: irony in “The Story of an Hour” (1894) and “Désirée’s Baby” (1893).
Unit 1 · 1862–1910
O. Henry and the Twist Ending
“The Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” “After Twenty Years” and “The Last Leaf”: his life, foreshadowing and irony, a clue-spotting game and a quiz.
Coming soon · 1876–1916
Jack London and Naturalism
One man, one dog and seventy-five degrees below zero: “To Build a Fire” and the Yukon of the Klondike Gold Rush.
Related Courses
Sources
- Edgar Allan Poe, review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales, Graham’s Magazine, May 1842, pp. 298–300, text from the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore (eapoe.org).
- Wikipedia, “Short story” (definition, Irving’s early stories, the magazine demand for 3,000 to 15,000 words), “Washington Irving,” “Bret Harte,” “Kate Chopin,” “Jack London” and “To Build a Fire” (dates and titles for the planned units).
- Art: the newsstand illustration and preview image are original artwork made for Jugami.