A short story collection is a book of short stories and/or novellas by a single author. A short story collection is distinguished from an anthology of fiction, which would contain work by several authors (e.g., Les Soirées de Médan). The stories in a collection may or may not share a tone, theme, setting, or characters with one another. Composition of a collection Short story collections are made up of smaller texts—the individual short stories—in order to form a superior whole. In spite of this, each short story does not lose any of its meaning or narrative independence by being included in a collection. This does not mean that short stories do not gain any new meaning from being included in a collection, though. Because each story's context has changed, surrounded by other stories with their own meanings and tones, the meaning and tone of any individual story might also be affected. In addition to the individual stories, short story collections may also include notes by the author. The act of writing short stories is different from the act of gathering short stories into a collection. For instance, the short story author may or may not be the one who compiles the short story collection, even though the author penned the individual stories. This is especially obvious in the case of posthumous publications. Note that short story collections should be considered different from traditional novels and other narratives because collections do not forward a cohesive storyline in the same way novels do. Instead, short story collections group individual pieces, each with their own narratives. If a short story collection as a whole has its own narrative, it is considered a short story cycle. History of short story collections Short story collections have their roots in medieval frame tale collections, growing into the postmodern narratives of the 1900s. Short story collections either can be authored traditionally by one person or evolve from oral, anonymous traditions that are finally penned by someone. An example of the latter would be Grimm's Fairy Tales. Short story collections can be published when the author is alive or they can be collected and published after the author is dead using the author's existing works. Early Western short story collections include Marie of France's Lais and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Uses for short story collections From the producer side, short story collections are helpful economically to authors looking to