SOURCE: Current-Garcia, Eugene. “Shifting Trends toward Realism in Fiction.” In The American Short Story before 1850: A Critical History, pp. 119-24. Boston: Twayne, 1985.

In the following essay, Current-Garcia discusses the emergence of a realist aesthetic in American short fiction of the mid-nineteenth century.

By the 1850s many other American writers beside the Southwest yarn spinners were producing short fiction for the magazines and newspapers; but the short story itself, as a distinct literary form, still lacked independent status and respectability. Few besides Poe, Hawthorne, and Simms had tried to define its aesthetic significance or grappled with its formal requirements. Even such terms as tale, sketch, story, and short story were being used interchangeably with little conscious concern for the principles of unity and brevity laid down by Poe. Nevertheless, as the magazines proliferated and their circulations expanded, they depended more and more on short fiction to keep their readers...