The Cambridge History of the English Short Story

The Cambridge History of the English Short Story is the first comprehensive volume to capture the literary history of the English short story. Charting the origins and generic evolution of the English short story to the present day, and written by international experts in the field, this book covers numerous transnational and historical connections between writers, modes and forms of transmission. Suitable for English literature students and scholars of the English short story generally, it will become a standard work of reference in its field.

Presents the first comprehensive analysis of the short story in England in one volume
Combines a chronological survey with a thorough account of different generic forms to facilitate an understanding of how forms and techniques have evolved
Provides readers with an exhaustive overview of the short story to encourage comparative study

Reviews & endorsements

'… the book covers enormous ground - colonial stories, rural stories, queer stories, comic stories - and makes room for obscure writers beside the heavyweights … with this approach, an expert writes each chapter. Highlights include Heather Ingman on the Irish short story and Roger Luckhurst on weird fiction, that amorphous zone between horror, fantasy and surrealism.' Chris Power, New Statesman

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Product details

Published: October 2021
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781316618042
Length: 669 pages
Dimensions: 230 × 150 × 40 mm
Weight: 0.99kg
Availability: Available

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Contents

List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction Dominic Head
1. Early modern diversity: the origins of English short fiction Barbara Korte
2. Short prose narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Donald J. Newman
3. Gothic and Victorian supernatural tales Jessica Cox
4. The Victorian potboiler: novelists writing short stories Sophie Gilmartin
5. Fable, myth and folktale: the writing of oral and traditional story forms Andrew Harrison
6. The colonial short story, adventure and the exotic Robert Hampson
7. The Yellow Book circle and the culture of the literary magazine Winnie Chan
8. The modernist short story: fractured perspectives Claire Drewery
9. War stories: the short story in World Wars I and II Ann-Marie Einhaus
10. The short story in Ireland to 1945: a national literature Heather Ingman
11. The short story in Ireland since 1945: a modernizing tradition Heather Ingman
12. The short story in Scotland: from oral tale to dialectal style Timothy C. Baker
13. The short story in Wales: cultivated regionalism Jane Aaron
14. The understated art, English style Dean Baldwin
15. The rural tradition in the English short story Dominic Head
16. Metropolitan modernity: stories of London Neal Alexander
17. Gender and genre: short fiction, feminism and female experience Sabine Coelsch-Foisner
18. Queer short stories: an inverted history Brett Josef Grubisic and Carellin Brooks
19. Stories of Jewish identity: survivors, exiles and cosmopolitans Axel Stähler
20. New voices: multicultural short stories Abigail Ward
21. Settler stories: postcolonial short fiction Victoria Kuttainen
22. After Empire: postcolonial short fiction and the oral tradition John Thieme
23. Ghost stories and supernatural tales Ruth Robbins
24. The detective story: order from chaos Andrew Maunder
25. Frontiers: science fiction and the British marketplace Paul March-Russell
26. Weird stories: the potency of horror and fantasy Roger Luckhurst
27. Experimentalism: self-reflexive and postmodernist stories David James
28. Satirical stories: estrangement and social critique Sandie Byrne
29. Comedic short fiction Richard Bradford
30. Short story cycles: between the novel and the story collection Gerald Lynch
31. The novella: between the novel and the story Gerri Kimber
32. The short story visualized: adaptations and screenplays Linda Costanzo Cahir
33. The short story anthology: shaping the canon Lynda Prescott
34. The institution of creative writing Ailsa Cox
35. Short story futures Julian Murphet
Bibliography
Index.

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About the authors

Contributors

Dominic Head, Barbara Korte, Donald J. Newman, Jessica Cox, Sophie Gilmartin, Andrew Harrison, Robert Hampson, Winnie Chan, Claire Drewery, Ann-Marie Einhaus, Heather Ingman, Timothy C. Baker, Jane Aaron, Dean Baldwin, Neal Alexander, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Brett Josef Grubisic, Carellin Brooks, Axel Stähler, Abigail Ward, Victoria Kuttainen, John Thieme, Ruth Robbins, Andrew Maunder, Paul March-Russell, Roger Luckhurst, David James, Sandie Byrne, Richard Bradford, Gerald Lynch, Gerri Kimber, Linda Costanzo Cahir, Lynda Prescott, Ailsa Cox, Julian Murphet

Editor

Dominic Head , University of Nottingham
Dominic Head is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham, where he served as Head of School from 2007–10. He has written extensively on forms of literature and is author of The Modernist Short Story (Cambridge, 1992) and The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950–2000 (Cambridge, 2002), and editor of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, 3rd edition (Cambridge, 2006).

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