As the previous chapter has been at pains to demonstrate, the material conditions for the emergence of the British short story were to a large extent in place by the end of the 1870s, but even by this late date, the aesthetics of the genre were not yet articulated, and few British authors had seriously explored its possibilities. What this chapter will attempt to show is how late-Victorian authors began to be aware of and exploit the expanding market for short stories while simultaneously groping toward an aesthetics of the genre.

Wilkie Collins (1824–89) may serve as an example of the late Victorian author, similar in his approach to short fiction as Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. Whether his short fiction should even be labelled ‘short stories’ is debatable:

Moreover, Collins’ place in the development of the genre is also questionable because of the very uneven quality of his tales and his reliance on popular genres and traditional plot. Nonetheless, Collins published short fiction (or tales) throughout his career, sufficient to create six collections spanning the years 1856–87. From the point of view of this study, however, he illustrates how short fiction during this period helped to support a novelist financially between novels, as nothing Collins did in short fiction rivals the impact of The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868). Something of the tales’ importance to his contemporaries may be gathered from the fact that while his novels were frequently reviewed, I can find not one collection of his stories that warranted mention in the contemporary literary press.