The Lonely Voice is a study of the short story form, written by Frank O'Connor

Frank O'Connor

Frank O’Connor was an Irish author of over 150 works, best known for his short stories and memoirs.-Early life:...

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Within the study, O'Connor expounds on some of his own major theories of the short story, as well as discussing the work of many influential short story writers.

Each chapter focusses on a different author:

1. Turgenev

2. Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....

3. Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

4. Kipling

5. James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

6. Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...

7. Lawrence and Coppard

8. Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

One of the work's major contributions is that of "the submerged population group" - a term that O'Connor uses to characterise those individuals who, for whatever reasons, are left on the fringes of society. The book is seen by many critics as the first lengthy examination of the form, and it has been heralded by many writers as an influential work.