The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol.
1, by Various, et al

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Title: The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1

Author: Various

Release Date: November 19, 2003 [eBook #10135]

Language: English

Chatacter set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT ENGLISH SHORT-STORY
WRITERS, VOL. 1***

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE READERS'S LIBRARY

THE GREAT ENGLISH SHORT-STORY WRITERS

VOL. I

WITH INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS BY

WILLIAM J. DAWSON AND CONINGSBY W. DAWSON

MCMX

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To the publishers and authors who have courteously permitted the use
of copyrighted material in these two volumes, a word of grateful
acknowledgment is hereby given by the editors.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHORT-STORY

II. THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL. By Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)

III. THE MYSTERIOUS BRIDE. By James Hogg (1770-1835)

IV. THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER. By Washington Irving (1783-1859)

V. DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1807-1864)

VI. THE PURLOINED LETTER. By Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

VII. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. By Dr. John Brown (1810-1882)

VIII. THE BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN. By Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

IX. A STORY OF SEVEN DEVILS. By Frank R. Stockton. (1834-1902)

X. A DOG'S TALE. By Mark Twain (1835)

XI. THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. By Bret Harte (1839-1902)

XII. THE THREE STRANGERS. By Thomas Hardy (1840)

XIII. JULIA BRIDE. By Henry James (1843)

XIV. A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT. By Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

INDEX

The Evolution of the Short-Story

I

The short-story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as
Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their
stories round the savage camp-fire."

It bears the mark of its origin, for even to-day it is true that the
more it creates the illusion of the speaking-voice, causing the reader
to listen and to see, so that he forgets the printed page, the better
does it accomplish i