First published in 1993, The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story challenges the traditional critical approaches to the short story through the methods of deconstruction. Alongside a review of these approaches, Douglas Tallack discusses the work of nineteenth-century American writers, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Gilman and James. The short story is used as a means of raising key theoretical questions. In particular, the relationships between language, form and ideology, gender, genre, and literary history are examined through close readings of selected texts.

The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story is the most provocative reading available of an area largely neglected by contemporary theory. Of interest to students and teachers of English and American Literature, Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies, this book adds a critical edge to any discussion of the genre and its implications.