SOURCE: Marler, Robert F. “From Tale to Short Story: The Emergence of a New Genre in the 1850's.” American Literature 46, no. 2 (May 1974): 153-69.

In the following essay, Marler asserts that the development of American short fiction in the 1850s is evidenced by the decline of the “tale” and the ascent of the “short story,” a significant change that was particularly discernible in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.

A wave of tales flooded American magazines during the expansive years of the 1850's. As art, all but a few of these works deserve the oblivion that time has bestowed, but because of them the period from 1850 to the beginning of the Civil War has been discredited and generally ignored in the history of American short fiction. As a result, the early evolution of the American short story from the magazine tale has been overlooked...