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PREFATORY NOTE

In these chapters I have attempted a valuation of the American short story rather than a comprehensive history. I have, therefore, been less concerned with individual books than with forces and tendencies, less interested in detailed analysis than in an attempted synthesis. Above all, I have sought to set down an impression rather than to write a textbook. Other writers on the subject have been legitimately preoccupied with technique. My chief interest in writing these pages will be found to lie in realizing, so far as I may, a new form of life.

My debt to predecessors and fellow-workers is great and frequently acknowledged in these pages, but I owe a special word of acknowledgment to my friends John Gould Fletcher and John Cournos for much stimulating converse, while many discussions with my friend Robert Graves have resulted in my adoption of a certain attitude of psychological approach for which, however, he is not to be held responsible. To Sherwood Ander

son I am indebted for unconscious hints; to Messrs. Harper and Brothers for permission to embody in these pages the substance of my introduction to Land's End and Other Stories by Wilbur Daniel Steele; to Francis J. Hannigan for preparing the index and seeing these pages through the press; and to the shade of Joseph Joubert for a motto: "Oh! ye fat geniuses, despise not the lean!" EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

Forest Hill, Oxon, England

October 25, 1922

THE ADVANCE

OF THE

AMERICAN SHORT STORY

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