1862-1910) and Jack London
(1876-1916), apostles of the burly and vigorous in fiction. Beside or
above them stand Henry James (1843-1916)--although he belongs to an
earlier period as well--Edith Wharton (1862- ), Alice Brown (1857- ),
Margaret Wade Deland (1857- ), and Katharine Fullerton Gerould
(1879- ), practitioners in all that O. Henry and London are not, of
the finer fields, the more subtle nuances of modern life. With O.
Henry and London, though perhaps less noteworthy, are to be grouped
George Randolph Chester (1869- ) and Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876- ).
Then, standing rather each by himself, are Melville Davisson Post
(1871- ), a master of psychological mystery stories, and Wilbur Daniel
Steele (1886- ), whose work it is hard to classify. These ten names
represent much that is best in American short story production since
the beginning of the twentieth century (1900). Not all are notable for
humor; but inasmuch as any consideration of the American humorous
short story cannot be wholly dissociated from a consideration of the
American short story in general, it has seemed not amiss to mention
these authors here. Although Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) lived on
into the twentieth century and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1862- ) is
still with us, the best and most typical work of these two writers
belongs in the last two decades of the previous century. To an earlier
period also belong Charles Egbert Craddock (1850- ), George Washington
Cable (1844- ), Thomas Nelson Page (1853- ), Constance Fenimore
Woolson (1848-1894), Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835- ), Hamlin
Garland (1860- ), Ambrose Bierce (1842-?), Rose Terry Cooke
(1827-1892), and Kate Chopin (1851-1904).

"O. Henry" was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter. He began
his short story career by contributing _Whistling Dick's Christmas
Stocking_ to _McClure's Magazine_ in 1899. He followed it with many
stories dealing with Western and South- and Central-American life, and
later came most of his stories of the life of New York City, in which
field lies most of his best work. He contributed more stories to the
_New York World_ than to any other one publication--as if the stories
of the author who later came to be hailed as "the American Maupassant"
were not good enough for the "leading" magazines but fit only for the
sensation-loving public of the Sunday papers! His first published
story that showed distinct strength was perhaps _A Blackjack
Bargainer_ (Augu