Students of this type of narrative find Poe the first man to reveal a consciousness of any strictly limiting tenets. Poe worked to definite rules which he himself made. He saw intrinsic reasons why a short-story should be short. His predecessors, Irving and others, had not seen them. Even Hawthorne, who fulfilled them many times, said nothing about them. But Poe both formulated and preached them. He exemplified them, too, and other men followed. The list of good short-story writers is so great that particular mention of any seems invidious. Some of our less known men have done as good work as our best. For names by countries, you may notice the bibliography at the end of this book. Kipling's stories for a large part emphasize place; Poe's, very often plot; and Hawthorne's and Stevenson's, mostly psychological phenomena--character and whimsical expressions of it; Miss Wilkins's altogether reveal temperament and characteristics; while Maupassant's generally record events which include a stab of fate. On the basis of artistic purpose, the short-story divides itself into three types: the weird tale, stories that emphasize environment and typical personality, stories that emphasize events and character. Every narrator whenever he sets his pen to paper must deal with place, plot, and people; but the artistic short-story writer, because of the limitation of his form, is forced to a selection of emphasis. He can not at will, as the biographer can, dilate upon the ancestry of his hero if he means to present the personage in action; if he wants to indulge in an environment analysis, the short-story writer has not time to wind up and unwind a mystery; if he has decided to give us the crisis event of a character, he must perforce touch but lightly on place. We shall find, then, that while each good short-story has the three elements present and skilfully managed, it has also one or the other more strongly emphasized--or at most two, in practical neglect of the third. I. The Psychological Weird Tale [Origin]