The Specter Bridegroom – It need hardly be said that the literature of the United States is a direct offshoot of that of England. The writings of the early Colonial period differ from the contemporaneous writings of the mother country, when they differ at all, only in subject-matter. It was only natural that the Puritan influence should predominate in New England for a long time after the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620; as a matter of fact, it is still a potent force in American life and art.
American fiction is therefore a late growth. Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) is usually regarded as the first novelist, but it was James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) and Washington Irving (1783-1859) who, by their genuinely American stories and undoubted talents as writers, first won places for themselves among the readers of the new land.
Nineteenth Century
The Specter Bridegroom – The earlier years of the Nineteenth Century witnessed the sporadic appearance of such writers as Irving, men who turned their hand to the short-story form and utilized it for the interpretation of what was later termed the American Scene; but not until the advent of Poe can it be properly asserted that the short story came into its own. Poe’s stories are probably the most famous as they were certainly the most influential of any written within the past four centuries.
But he had at least one contemporary who was as great an artist as he: Hawthorne, though primarily a novelist, began writing excellent short stories as early as the thirties. Poe’s followers—those both directly influenced by him as well as those who were not—were numerous. Among the more important may be mentioned Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892) and Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-1862).
Somewhat later several writers of distinction played important roles in the development of the short story: Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret Harte, Henry James, Frank Stockton, H. C. Bunner, William Dean Howells, are only a few of a far larger group that contributed a mass of short-story literature to American letters.
