ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book attempts to elaborate on some of the most significant movements and influences between 1800 and 1830. It seems appropriate to look ahead briefly to the progress of short fiction over the next decade. The book discusses the modern critical neglect of short fiction published during the early decades of the century. Anthologies of short fiction were of course published prior to the 1830s, and collections of European tales and anthologies compiled from Gothic bluebooks were particularly prominent during the 1810s and 1820s. The book argues that short fiction in the early nineteenth century was, to a large degree, defined by its market. It presents a study, which has sought to disclose those versions of early-nineteenth-century short fiction that lie somewhere between the brusque negativity voiced by Wendell Harris and the woolly Romanticism of Charles May's appraisal.
