[f. STORY sb.1 + TELLER.] One who tells stories.
1. One who is accustomed to tell stories or anecdotes in conversation.
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 132, ¶ 10. There is nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling Story-Teller.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 247, ¶ 8. As for newsmongers, politicians, mimics, story-tellers,… they are as commonly found among the men as the women.
a. 1763. W. King, Lit. & Polit. Anecd. (1819), 72. A story teller is the most agreeable or the most disagreeable character we can meet with.
1862. Fraser’s Mag., July, 46. He was also a bon-vivant, a diner-out, and a story-teller.
2. Euphemistically: A liar. colloq.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), III. 20. Wicked story-teller!
1770. Wesley, Jrnl., 21 March. ‘But,’ says he [a boy of nine], ‘you quarrel with God’s word;… So you make God a Story-teller.’
1796. Mme. D’Arblay, Camilla, II. 63. He is a very learned gentleman, and no more a story-teller than I am myself.
1814. Sporting Mag., XLIII. 371. I always believed you to be one of the greatest story tellers in England, but I find you have spoke the truth to day.
1825. T. Hook, Sayings, Ser. II. Man of Many Fr., I. 196. Oh, you story-teller, Tom!
1862. Mrs. H. Wood, Mrs. Hallib., II. ii. What an old story-teller she must be.
3. One whose business it is to recite legendary or romantic stories.
1777. J. Richardson, Dissert. Language, 57. Professed story-tellers … are of early date in the East.
1813. Byron, Giaour, 1334, note. The coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., III. 266. A profession peculiar to Italy and the East,—that of the Story-tellers.
1846. Mill, Diss. & Disc. (1859), II. 310. The Greek religion appears in them too much as a sort of accident, the arbitrary creation of poets and storytellers.
1908. Hibbert Jrnl., Oct., 27. I have paid special attention to public story-tellers.
4. Applied to a writer of stories.
1814. Scott, Wav., lxv. These circumstances will serve to explain such points of our narrative as, according to the custom of story-tellers, we deemed it fit to leave unexplained, for the purpose of exciting the reader’s curiosity.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., xvii. The exigencies of a story-teller must lead him away from home now and then.
1885. Miss Gatty, Juliana H. Ewing, i. 3. I have promised the children to write something for them about their favourite story-teller, Juliana Horatia Ewing.
transf. 1879. Social Notes, IV. 114/1. Hogarth was a story-teller in the strictest sense of the term; his series of pictures corresponded closely to the novelist’s chapters.
5. The teller of a particular story.
1851. D. Jerrold, St. Giles, xiv. 138. Again was he pressed to rehearse the tale, whilst mugs of ale rewarded the story-teller.
1883. Miss M. Betham-Edwards, Disarmed, iii. The story-teller suddenly broke down, as if thrilled and set atremble with the potency of his own words.
1911. Swanton, Ind. Tribes Lower Mississ. (Bureau Amer. Ethnol.), 323, note. The storyteller added that there were other parts to the myth, which he had forgotten.
