Who is credited with being the greatest and most influential writer of short fiction in the Romantic era?
If you are referring to the American Romantic era, Washington Irving would fit as the most influential writer of short American Romantic fiction. Irving is the first American writer to be popular in Europe, and his short stories are some of the first to be distinctly American (as far as setting and idiosyncrasies). His use of supernatural elements, morals, and a folk-tale style make Irving’s work Romantic. Irving’s best-known stories, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” serve as specific examples of his reliance on Romantic elements and his satirizing of American (and some European) issues. While Dark Romantics like Poe and Hawthorne might be more popular now, some literary critics claim that Irving paved the way for those authors’ work to be more widely accepted.
