Nesbit, Stephen Crane, Joseph Conrad, Edwin
Pugh, Jerome K. Jerome, Kenneth Graham, Arthur Morrison, Marriott Watson,
George Moore, Grant Allen, George Egerton, Henry Harland, Pett Ridge, W.
W. Jacobs (who alone seems inexhaustible). I dare say I could recall as
many more names with a little effort. I may be succumbing to the
infirmities of middle age, but I do not think the present decade can
produce any parallel to this list, or what is more remarkable, that the
later achievements in this field of any of the survivors from that time,
with the sole exception of Joseph Conrad, can compare with the work they
did before 1900. It seems to me this outburst of short stories came not
only as a phase in literary development, but also as a phase in the
development of the individual writers concerned.
It is now quite unusual to see any adequate criticism of short stories in
English. I do not know how far the decline in short-story writing may not
be due to that. Every sort of artist demands human responses, and few men
can contrive to write merely for a publisher's cheque and silence, however
reassuring that cheque may be.
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