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Although Dickens at the height of his popularity wrote some short stories, the modern English short story makes its appearance some years after his death, beginning in the 1880's.The interest in this form was strongest probably from 1885-1930.The names associated with the short story would include Stevenson, Hardy, Kipling, H. G. Wells, Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Lawrence, O'Connor, Katherine Mansfield, and A. E. Coppard. Clearly there has been no lack of work in the short story in Britain. Yet literary and critical interest in the short story has never been as great in Britain as it has been in the United States, France, and possibly Germany. Although writers like STEVENSON, Kipling, and Wells still enjoy large sales for their short stories, it is a fact, though many British publishers have been reluctantly compelled to acknowledge, that it is very difficult to sell volumes of short stories by new writers to the British reading public, which has never really taken the short story to its heart.
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