The decline of the critical reputation of Nathaniel Parker Willis, wrote Arthur Hobson Quinn, provides "a shining example of the price a gifted man pays in terms of lasting fame for contemporary popularity." This kind of assessment of Willis's work has become a critical cliché, accurate enough in general, but insufficient because it discounts Willis's pervasive influence on short fiction as an editor and arbiter of taste during the 1830s and 1840s. Indicative of popular tastes and the demands of the magazine market, Willis's work informs the literary historian who seeks to know something of the state of the art of popular short fiction during the first half of the nineteenth century. Willis, whatever his shortcomings, had an uncanny ability to anticipate what the literary market would bear.

Nathaniel Parker Willis was born 20 January 1806 in Portland, Maine, the son and grandson of journalists. His grandfather, Nathaniel, founded...