Brief narrative, at first thought, connotes the abridged fiction of low grade with which American magazines are now saturated; but as soon as the term is used to cover the whole field in modern literature, it calls to mind a genre which, under various names, has risen to a position of dignity in many places in the world and has worthily engaged the attention of literary historians, particularly in America and in Germany.The chief features in the development of the form in the United States and England have been discussed at length, and there is now a definitive record, with abundant bibliographical apparatus, of its evolution. Poe is looked upon as the pioneer, and his perpetually quoted definition (1842) has set a standard for the majority of the practitioners of the art in the English language. The form suggests, for America, such experts as Hawthorne, Bret Harte, and Henry James; in England it does not gain the attention of writers of the first magnitude until near the end of the century, in the persons of Stevenson and Kipling.