Modern short stories emerged as their own genre in the early 19th century. Early examples of short stories include the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (1824–1826) or Nikolai Gogol"s Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831-1832). Charles Brockden Brown"s "Somnambulism" (1805), Washington Irving"s Rip van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), Edgar Allan Poe"s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) and Nathaniel Hawthorne"s Twice-Told Tales (1842) are the first examples in the USA.
In the later part of the 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong market demand for short fiction between 3,000 and 15,000 words in length. Among the famous short stories to come out of this time period was "Ward No. 6" by Anton Chekhov.
At the same time first literary theories about the short story appeared. The first widely known theory is Edgar Allan Poe"s "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). In 1901 Brander Matthews, first US-American professor of dramatic literature published his "The Philosophy of the Short-Story."
In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner"s, and The Saturday Evening Post, all published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great, and the money paid for them so high, that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short story writing to pay off his numerous debts.
The demand for short stories by print magazines hit its peak in the middle of the 20th century, when in 1952 Life magazine published Ernest Hemingway"s long short story (or novella) The Old Man and the Sea. The issue containing this story sold 5,300,000 copies in only two days.
Since then, the number of commercial magazines that publish short stories has declined, even though several well-known magazines like The New Yorker continue to feature them. Literary magazines also provide a showcase for short stories. In addition, short stories have recently found a new life online, where they can be found in online magazines, in collections organized by author or theme, and on blogs
