Final answer:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe were the first American writers to produce a significant number of short stories, marking the rise of American literature influenced by the Industrial Age and distinct from British literary customs.
Step-by-step explanation:
The first American writers to create a significant number of short stories, according to literary historians, were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe. These authors were pivotal in developing an American literary tradition, despite the challenges posed by the popularity of British literature. Their achievements were in part thanks to the technological advancements of the Industrial Age, which expanded leisure time and the culture of print, enabling American literature to flourish. Notably, their works contributed to the growth of literary genres such as the mystery and the gothic tale as well as to the emergence of a uniquely American style of writing that interacted with the North American landscape in new ways.