Short Story, Beginnings to 1900

In an era when most American literature came from the North, the South distinguished itself most notably in the short story, producing two of its foremost authorities in Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain, as well as one of its best-known characters in Uncle Remus. Through the short story, furthermore, southerners led in the development of two important American genres: Southwestern humor and local color. The hundreds of stories in this rich tradition cover a range of characters and landscapes, from madmen ensconced in gothic mansions to saucy backwoodsmen romping over the frontier, and the best early southern stories share a brilliance of form and style