Masters of the short story
The 20th century was a time of great development in the short story. Three excellent practitioners of the art were Saki, Coppard, and Mansfield, who preferred short fiction to novels and who made important contributions to the form and substance of the genre.
The 20th century was a time of great development in the short story. Three excellent practitioners of the art were Saki, Coppard, and Mansfield, who preferred short fiction to novels and who made important contributions to the form and substance of the genre.
Saki: (real name Hector Hugh Munro 1870- 1916)
His stories of bizarre humor, tinged with the macabre, satirized upper class conventionality and stupidity. His wit is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh. A favorite device is to use animal-wolves, tigers, ferrets, bulls-as agents of revenge upon humans. From Reginald(1914), his first collection of short stories ,
to the Suare egg (1924), Saki delighted a growing number of loyal readers.
to the Suare egg (1924), Saki delighted a growing number of loyal readers.
Alfred Edgar Coppard: (1878-1957):
poor health terminated his formal education at age nine. He wrote more than 100 impressive short stories in seventeen volumes. His simple country characters are revealed through action, and both comic and tragic portrayals are tinged with poetry. He often shows pity for victims defeated by thoughtless actions and a deep sympathy for the oddities and misfits. His deceptively simple stories are much admired by fellow writers. From his first collection, Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (1921), he was encouraged by such literary
figures as Ford Maddox Ford.
Kathrine Mansfield:
Her real name Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp, (1888-1923). The first short story writer in English to show the influence of Anton Chkhov, she was increasingly recognized as an orignal and experimental writer who was interested not in the external world, but in moments of illumination when one learns something about life or selfhood. Her insistence that a short story present a " slice of experience" rather than a narrative or moral has greatly influenced letter writers. Her stories vary in length form long, impressionistic evocations of family life ("At the Bay" "Prelude") to brief incisive sketches ("Miss Brill"). She contributed to the short story genre what Virginia Woolf gave to the novel, using the stream of consciousness technique to follow the wanderings of the human mind. She is particularly adept in revealing the thoughts of children. Her best -known collections are Bliss, and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922).
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