SOURCE: Martin, Augustine. “The Short Stories of James Stephens.” Colby Library Quarterly (December 1963): 343–53.

In the following essay, Martin discusses Stephens's short stories in terms of his place in Irish literary history, his own literary development, the characters and moods he creates, and his treatment of childhood.

Stephens's development as a short story writer is interesting because it parallels a certain decisive phase in the evolution of that genre among Irish writers. His first volume, Here Are Ladies, appeared in 1913, one year before Joyce's Dubliners and three years before Corkery's A Munster Twilight. In other words, Stephens's collection antedated the two strong formative influences from which the modern Irish short story took its character. It was from this point on that the great period of the Irish short story—which Frank O'Connor regards as a separate art form—emerged. The lessons of the great continentals which George Moore had...