This wide-ranging introduction to the short story tradition in the United States of America traces the genre from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century with Irving, Hawthorne and Poe via Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner to O'Connor and Carver. The major writers in the genre are covered in depth with a general view of their work and detailed discussion of a number of examples of individual stories. The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story offers a comprehensive and accessible guide to this rich literary tradition. It will be invaluable to students and readers looking for critical approaches to the short story and wishing to deepen their understanding of how authors have approached and developed this fascinating and challenging genre. Further reading suggestions are included to explore the subject in more depth. This is an invaluable overview for all students and readers of American fiction.

The short story has become an increasingly important genre since the mid-nineteenth century. Complementing The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story, this book examines the development of the short story in Britain and other English-language literatures. It considers issues of form and style alongside - and often as part of - a broader discussion of publishing history and the cultural contexts in which the short story has flourished and continues to flourish. In its structure the book provides a chronological survey of the form, usefully grouping writers to show the development of the genre over time. Starting with Dickens and Kipling, the chapters cover key authors from the past two centuries and up to the present day. The focus on form, literary history, and cultural context, together with the highlighting of the greatest short stories and their authors, make this a stimulating and informative overview for all students of English literature.

This Companion offers students and scholars a comprehensive introduction to the development and the diversity of the American short story as a literary form from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present day. Rather than define what the short story is as a genre, or defend its importance in comparison with the novel, this Companion seeks to understand what the short story does – how it moves through national space, how it is always related to other genres and media, and how its inherent mobility responds to the literary marketplace and resonates with key critical themes in contemporary literary studies. The chapters offer authoritative introductions and reinterpretations of a literary form that has re-emerged as a major force in the twenty-first-century public sphere dominated by the Internet.

This Companion provides an accessible overview of short fiction by writers from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and other international sites. A collection of international experts examine the development of the short story in a variety of contexts from the early nineteenth century to the present. They consider how dramatic changes in the publishing landscape during this period - such as the rise of the fiction magazine and the emergence of new opportunities in online and electronic publishing - influenced the form, covering subgenres from detective fiction to flash fiction. Drawing on a wealth of critical scholarship to place the short story in the English literary tradition, this volume will be an invaluable guide for students of the short story in English.

A concise, comprehensive and original introduction to the fiction and journalism of Gabriel García Márquez.

More than a century after its beginnings, modernism still has the power to shock, alienate or challenge readers. Modernist art and literature remain thought of as complex and difficult. This introduction explains in a readable, lively style how modernism emerged, how it is defined, and how it developed in different forms and genres. Pericles Lewis offers students a survey of literature and art in England, Ireland and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. He also provides an overview of critical thought on modernism and its continuing influence on the arts today, reflecting the interests of current scholarship in the social and cultural contexts of modernism. The comparative perspective on Anglo-American and European modernism shows how European movements have influenced the development of English-language modernism. Illustrated with works of art and featuring suggestions for further study, this is the ideal introduction to understanding and enjoying modernist literature and art.

This Companion provides an accessible overview of the contexts, periods, and subgenres of English-language short fiction outside of North America.