THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (continued 3)

Henry James, Jr.—A subject of contention among critics, having an ardent if not a large following, but standing for something like caviare to the general public, Henry James is to-day one of the most striking figures among American novelists. He was born in New York, April 15, 1843, the son of Henry James the theologian, and a younger brother of William James the psychologist. His family was Irish on the father’s side and Scotch on the mother’s. He has told us of his early years and of how, while the other boys were at their games, he used to sit on the hearth-rug studying Punch and learning about the life which John Leech’s pictures suggested to him. At eleven he was sent abroad and spent six years in England, France, and Switzerland, deeply interested in European culture, art, and social tradition. On his return, his family made their home at Newport, Rhode Island. In 1862 he entered the Harvard Law School, but found more pleasure in the lectures of James Russell Lowell on literature than in the reading of law. Soon after leaving Cambridge, having succeeded with some early ventures in The Galaxy and other magazines, he began to devote himself wholly to literature. Since 1869 he has lived abroad, chiefly in Paris, London, and Italy. His life has been a quiet, uneventful study of men and women, of books, of places.

Mr. James has been a fairly prolific writer, of constantly increasing subtlety and attention to finish. His first stories, curiously enough, revealed a romantic, at times even sensational, bent, which he soon outgrew. His first novel, “Watch and Ward” (1871), was promising but not otherwise significant; “Roderick Hudson” (1875) was quite equal to the best of his later work, combining profound analysis of character with perhaps more sentiment than appears in his later works. It is a study of the artistic temperament in the person of a young American sculptor who is taken to Italy by a rich virtuoso. The story deals with two favourite studies of Mr. James: the contrast between Americans and the older races with which they come into contact in Europe, and the contrast between the artistic and the prosaic person. The first of these contrasts forms the subject of “A Passionate Pilgrim” (1875), including that exquisite story “The Madonna of the Future,” of “The American” (1877), and of “Daisy Miller, a Comedy” (1878), in which a burlesque element is noticeable. From the year 1875, then, may be said to date the “international novel” of comparison or contrast, which has become so immensely popular. In “The Europeans” (1878), the scene changes to Boston and the author shows how the life of the Puritans appears to foreign visitors. Other international studies are found in “An International Episode” (1879), “The Portrait of a Lady” (1881), one of his most popular longer novels, and “The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View” (1883). In 1880 (dated 1881) appeared “Washington Square,” a quiet story laid in a formerly aristocratic quarter of New York; the tale has been called “a miracle in monotone.” Then came “The Bostonians” (1886), which Professor Richardson speaks of as typically “long, dull, and inconsequential, but mildly pleasing the reader, or at times quite delighting him, by a deliberate style which is enjoyable for its own sake, by a calm portraiture which represents the characters with silhouette clearness, and by some very faithful and delicately humorous pictures of the life and scenery of Eastern Massachusetts.” “The Princess Casamassima” (1886) continues the career of an American adventuress, Christina Light, who has figured in “Roderick Hudson,” to which it thus forms a kind of sequel. Less read than some others, it is one of the most remarkable of Mr. James’ stories. In 1888 appeared “The Aspern Papers, and Other Stories” and “The Reverberator,” a comedy of manners recalling “The American,” and dealing with the incompatibility between the cultivated and the vulgar relatives of two lovers and with the odious violation of private life by modern journalism. “The Tragic Muse” (1890), a study of a psychological problem of art and love, is complicated and difficult in the extreme; a friend expressed a sound view of it to Mr. James: “I will say it is your best novel if you promise never to do it again,” probably meaning that the extreme limit of elaboration had been reached. Three collections of stories, “The Lesson of the Master, and Other Stories” (1892), “The Real Thing, and Other Tales” (1893), and “Terminations” (1895), include various comic sketches, with some preciosities, and a well-told ghost-story, “Sir Edmund Orme,” the motif of which was later repeated in “The Turn of the Screw” (1898), a horrible, nerve-racking tale. “The Other House” (1896) is a highly dramatic, even sensational, story of passion, culminating, strange to say, in a murder; yet Rose Armiger is Mr. James’ one supremely passionate woman. In 1897 were published “The Spoils of Poynton” and “What Maisie Knew,” the latter a rather unpleasant story of domestic unhappiness and sordid intrigue; Maisie being a little girl whose life was spent alternately in the company of divorced parents, equally guilty, each of whom had remarried. “In the Cage” (1898) is a tissue of shrewd guess-work woven by a lively telegraph girl who becomes interested in the love affair of two others. “The Two Magics” (1898) includes “The Turn of the Screw” and “Covering End,” a pleasant comedy about an English country house. “The Awkward Age” (1899) is a unique example of subtle, often elusive, analysis of character—of character which some might say was not worth analysis, with unimportant incidents and little action. “The Soft Side” (1900) is a collection of studies of abnormal character and curious psychical phenomena, in which the rhythm of the prose is at times remarkable for its suggestiveness. “The Sacred Fount” (1901) is a fanciful sketch dealing with the idea of youth as a rejuvenator of age. “The Wings of the Dove” (1902) has been called the most remarkable book that Mr. James has written. It is a long story of the old warfare between the flesh and the spirit, in which the unseen forces from another world play an unlooked-for part. Mr. James’ most recent stories are “The Better Sort” (1903), “The Ambassadors” (1904), and “The Golden Bowl” (1905).

It is difficult to sum up in a few words the leading traits of Mr. James. It is easy to speak of him as reeling off volumes of abstruseness in which the petty ambitions of worthless Americans are analysed with a minuteness like that in which the leisurely student of anatomy delights; but such innocuous “criticism” does not even touch Mr. James. Undoubtedly it has been increasingly hard of late years to follow him; his later stories, with their proneness to excessive psychological delving, have a certain analogy to Browning’s later poems, which became harder to follow. But judged by his best works, such as “Roderick Hudson,” “The Princess Casamassima,” and “The Other House,” he must be pronounced a great artist, a keen analyst of the small section of life and the few types of character which he has chosen to study (and if one does not care for the types, one may still recognise the art with which they are presented); and as always a loyal American. He is not a master of style; yet at his best he embodies certain qualities of supreme excellence in style—ease, intimacy, suggestiveness, lucidity, sincerity. He is never a preacher, nor is he ever the mere idler and dilettante. He is very much in earnest; and in consequence the moral effect of his exposition of life is wholesome. “Out of the corruption,” says Miss Cary,16 “of a society which Mr. James depicts with unsparing detail and without satire or didactic comment, rises the flame of purity. Some one among his characters is sure to stand for invincible goodness.” If the language of his later books becomes unintelligible, it will of course be a pity; but it seems quite unlikely that the great works of his middle period will soon cease to have a large body of appreciative and delighted readers.

Edward Eggleston.—The Hoosier life of southern Indiana has been described by Edward Eggleston (1837–1902). A native of Vevay, Indiana, he received only a brief school education, but taught himself several languages. He first became (1857) an itinerant Methodist minister in southern Indiana and then for nine years was a Bible Society agent in Minnesota. From 1866 till 1879, he was engaged partly in journalism and partly in a Brooklyn pastorate; then he retired to his country place on Lake George to devote himself entirely to literature.

His first book to win attention was “The Hoosier Schoolmaster” (1871), which first appeared as a serial in Hearth and Home. Having read Taine’s “Art in the Netherlands,” he says, he proceeded to apply Taine’s maxim, that an artist ought to paint what he has seen. The result was so faithful a picture that in spite of its faults it has a permanent value as a record of one phase of early Western life. Dr. Eggleston also wrote “The End of the World” (1872), which deals with the Millerites, who in 1842–3 proved by the Book of Daniel that the end of the world was at hand; “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873); “The Circuit Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age” (1874), in which he drew on his own early experiences; “Roxy” (1878), a story of picturesque incident and character development laid in the time of the Tippecanoe campaign of 1840; “The Graysons, a Story of Illinois” (1888), a realistic picture of pioneer life in which Abraham Lincoln figures as a character; “The Faith Doctor” (1891), which deals with Christian Science and kindred phenomena in New York, and which shows the influence of Mr. Howells; and “Duffels” (1893), a collection of stories.

Dr. Eggleston himself spoke of his attitude in literature as a constant struggle “between the lover of literary art and the religionist, the reformer, the philanthropist, the man with a mission.” We are not of course surprised to find an editor of The Sunday School Teacher making his moral too prominent. But while this mars much of his work, his novels may still be said to be fresh and genuine transcripts of life.

Julian Hawthorne.—Julian Hawthorne (born in 1846) inherited literary ability from his father, the romancer. As an infant he was delicate; at seven his health was good, but having been kept out of school he could neither read nor write. Entering Harvard in 1863, he became known as an all-around athlete. After leaving Harvard without graduating, he lived in Dresden for some years, then returned to America and became a hydrographic engineer in New York. In 1871 he began to win attention to his short stories, and since 1872 has devoted himself to literature and journalism, living successively in Dresden, London, and New York. “Bressant,” his first novel, published in Appleton’s Journal in 1872, is somewhat crude and not without sensational elements, but holds the interest. Then came “Idolatry” (1874), which, though rewritten in whole or in part seven times, is now unknown, “Garth” (1877), a long story of New Hampshire, the chief part being a painter’s love-story, “Sebastian Strome” (1880), a study of the chastening of a selfish character, strongly reminding us of “Adam Bede,” “Dust” (1883), a story of extreme self-sacrifice, “Fortune’s Fool” (1884), “Archibald Malmaison” (1884), a novelette, and “Beatrix Randolph” (1884). In general his stories are not pleasant reading. Impossible characters are not infrequent and there is a tendency toward the choice of morbid subjects. Many descriptive passages, however, are superbly done, and the general impression one gets is that of power, but of power unrestrained, a strong imagination capable of greater things than Mr. Hawthorne has done. Yet the qualities characteristic of his best books, like “Archibald Malmaison,” are such as led the late Richard Henry Stoddard, a man by no means deficient in judgment, and familiar with the best in modern literature, to pronounce Mr. Hawthorne “clearly and easily the first of living romancers.”

In recent years, Mr. Hawthorne has forsaken the paths of pure literature, with which he seems never to have been in love,17 for those of journalism.

William Dean Howells.—The apostle of latter-day realism, and one of the most noted of our writers of fiction, is Mr. Howells. He has been prominent in literary circles for more than forty years. The son of a journalist and printer, Mr. Howells was born at Martin’s Ferry, Belmont County, Ohio, in 1837. His father had adopted Swedenborgian tenets and the boy was reared in this faith. His boyhood life has been admirably described in “A Boy’s Town.” The family lived successively at several places in Ohio, and young Howells was in turn compositor, correspondent, and news editor. In 1859 he began contributing to The Atlantic Monthly, his first poem, “Andenken,” appearing anonymously in January, 1860. Nearly every volume of The Atlantic down to 1900 contains some of his work. A campaign “Life of Abraham Lincoln” (1860) netted him $160, and enabled him to make his first trip East and to meet Emerson, Lowell, and other New England writers; it also won for him the post of Consul at Venice, which he held from 1861 till 1865. The first fruits of his Italian residence were “Venetian Life” (1866) and “Italian Journeys” (1867), two descriptive works which revealed a truly poetic temperament and a refined taste. On his return to America, Mr. Howells became an editorial writer for the New York Times and a contributor to The Nation. The next year (1866), removing to Boston, he became assistant editor of The Atlantic; in 1871 he became the editor and made the magazine a stronger force than ever in criticism. On resigning this post in 1880, he spent a year or two abroad; since 1888 he has lived in New York, engaged chiefly in literary work. From 1886 till 1891 he conducted the Editor’s Study in Harper’s.

While Mr. Howells has been prolific in criticism, description, narratives of travel, literary and personal reminiscences, and lighter essays, his most significant work has been done in his novels. His first appearance as a writer of fiction was in 1871, with “Their Wedding Journey,” a slight but delicately humorous tale of a Boston couple, the Marches, who go to Canada to spend their honeymoon. “A Chance Acquaintance” (1873) is a subtle study of incompatibility of temperament. “A Foregone Conclusion” (1875) transports us to Venice, where we watch the unhappy love story, dramatically told, of an agnostic priest and an American girl. “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1879) is an amusing, healthy story of New England provincial manners. The theme of “The Undiscovered Country” (1880) is spiritualism and mesmerism. “A Fearful Responsibility” (1881) is the story of an American professor in Venice whose charge, a young girl, is loved by an Austrian officer. In “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1881) we have pictures of summer life in a small seaside village in Maine and a study of modern Puritanism. With “A Modern Instance” (1881) may be said to begin the extremely realistic stories in Mr. Howells’ later manner; others are: “A Woman’s Reason” (1883), “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885), “Indian Summer” (1886), “The Minister’s Charge, or The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker” (1887), “April Hopes” (1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “A Hazard of New Fortunes” (1890), in which the Marches have characteristic experiences in New York, “The Quality of Mercy” (1892), a painful but well told story, “The Coast of Bohemia” (1893), “An Open-Eyed Conspiracy” (1897), “Ragged Lady” (1899), “The Flight of Pony Baker” (1902), a captivating boys’ story, belonging with “A Boy’s Town,” “The Kentons” (1903), and “The Son of Royal Langbrith” (1905). From these novels, after the manner of Tolstoi, the romantic and even the ideal are rigorously excluded; we are treated to exhaustive, minutely detailed accounts of the daily lives of ordinary, generally commonplace people. Plot and incident are of secondary importance, although some chapters fairly bristle with incident; Mr. Howells holds that any transcript of real life, even though made at random, if skilfully handled, is of sufficient interest to form a good story. Naturally this view of the novel has found many opponents, and Mr. Howells’ books have been somewhat less popular of late years than they were in the eighties. After all, the hunger for the ideal cannot be wholly appeased by disagreeable actualities; and there are people whom we know all too well in the flesh to care to see them, in all their pettiness and meanness and duplicity, in the pages of fiction. Mr. Howells’ followers, however,—and there are many of them—contend that nothing is so interesting as real, actual, present life; that no detail of our daily round is without its significance; that the slightest act or omission of an act may affect our destiny. After all, the realists and the romanticists we have always with us; the former are just now in the majority; but the reaction is just as inevitable as the return of the pendulum.

In some of his later stories, as “The Traveller from Altruria” (1894) and “Through the Eye of the Needle” (1907), Mr. Howells has shown an increasing interest in the more serious problems of society—poverty, strikes, the causes of crime, “the tyranny of individualism,” and the conditions that hinder the spread of sympathy and human brotherhood. The effect of this increased ethical and human interest has probably not been to enhance the artistic value of his work; and some deplore his lapse from the high ideal of art for art’s sake. Others see in Mr. Howells’ recent works a greater attention to substance, a firmer tissue, a broader humanity. And always, be it said, in reading Mr. Howells, one is conscious of that fine and careful workmanship, that care for correct and proper form, that artistic conscience, without which, whatever his literary creed, Mr. Howells could never have become the foremost and representative American novelist of his time.

Frances Hodgson Burnett.—Frances H. Burnett was born in Manchester, England, in 1849, but came to America with her parents in 1865 and lived for eight years, until her marriage, in New Market and Knoxville, Tennessee. Since then she has lived in Washington and in Kent, England. She first gained notice with “Surly Tim’s Trouble” (Scribner’s Monthly, June, 1872), a story of Lancashire, as were also “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s” (1877), “Dolly” (1877, republished in 1883 as “Vagabondia”), and “Haworth’s” (1879) said to be a favourite with its author. With “Louisiana” (1880) she turned to America for material, describing life in the mountains of North Carolina. “Through One Administration” (1883) is a pathetic and powerful story of social and political life in Washington. “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1886), the Anglo-American story of a seven-year-old hero, has become a children’s classic; similar but less known are the tales in “Sara Crewe, and Other Stories” (1888), and “The Captain’s Youngest, Piccino, and Other Stories” (1894). In “The Pretty Sister of José” (1889), Mrs. Burnett deals with picturesque and striking Spanish characters and scenes. “A Lady of Quality” (1896) and its sequel, “His Grace of Osmonde” (1897), are melodramatic stories of English aristocrats in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim” (1899) deals with country life in Tennessee in the early sixties. Her latest stories are “The Dawn of a To-Morrow” (1906) and “The Shuttle” (1907), the latter a fascinating international novel. She has thoroughly demonstrated her power to delineate character as moulded by passion.

Philander Deming.—Philander Deming (born in Carlisle, New York, in 1829), a lawyer by profession, in 1873 began publishing in The Atlantic Monthly stories and sketches the scene of which is laid in the Adirondack region of northern New York. Devoid of sensationalism, these stories portray simply and effectively the rude but sound life of plain country folk. Mr. Deming has published in book form “Adirondack Stories” (1880), “Tompkins and Other Folks” (1885), and “The Story of a Pathfinder” (1907).

Lew Wallace.—General Lewis Wallace (1827–1905), an Indiana lawyer and soldier in the Mexican and Civil Wars, was the author of three novels, “The Fair God” (1873), “Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ” (1880), and “The Prince of India” (1893), which deserve mention chiefly because of their popularity. The second, especially, in this respect, ranks close to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Written in a spirit of deep reverence for the traditional view of Jesus of Nazareth, and making small demands upon the imagination, it could hardly fail to make a strong appeal to a large body of readers. As literature, however, Wallace’s books are of only transient importance.

Charles Dudley Warner.—Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) belongs mainly with the essayists, but wrote a few novels that deserve to live. With Mark Twain he wrote “The Gilded Age” (1873). “Their Pilgrimage” (1887) has a slight plot, but gives minute and accurate descriptions of Southern watering-places. “A Little Journey in the World” (1889) and its sequel, “The Golden House” (1895), are vivid pictures of decadent New York society. “That Fortune” (1899) is a picture, drawn from expert knowledge, of the New York financial world.

Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.—Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848–95) realised the dream of many in successfully combining the careers of authorship and teaching. Born at Frederiksvärn, Norway, and educated at Christiania, he came to America in 1869. He first became editor of a Scandinavian journal in Chicago. Then he studied philology at Leipsic for two years (1872–74). From 1874 till 1880 he was professor of German at Cornell University, and from 1881 till his death he filled a similar chair at Columbia University. Besides some poetry and essays, he wrote “Gunnar, a Norse Romance” (1874), his one effort in romance, “Tales from Two Hemispheres” (1876), “Falconberg” (1879), “Ilka on the Hilltop” (1881), a collection of short stories, “Queen Titania” (1881), “A Daughter of the Philistines” (1883), “Social Strugglers” (1893), “The Mammon of Unrighteousness” (1891), and “The Golden Calf” (1892). His later stories were realistic novels concerned with vital problems, such as the conflict between wealth and essential culture. Their vogue was not great, but their workmanship was genuine.

Blanche Willis Howard.—Blanche Willis Howard (1847–98) was born in Bangor, Maine, was educated in New York, and in 1878 went to Stuttgart, Germany, to engage in teaching and writing. In 1890 she was married to Baron von Teuffel, a physician. She wrote a number of novels, of which “One Summer” (1875), “Aunt Serena” (1880), “Guenn” (1882), “Aulnay Tower” (1886), “The Open Door” (1889), “No Heroes” (1893), a boys’ story, and “Seven on the Highway” (1897), a collection of short stories, may be mentioned. In collaboration with William Sharp she wrote “A Fellowe and His Wife” (1892), in which a comic atmosphere prevails. Perhaps “Guenn,” the pathetic story of a Breton maiden’s hopeless love, is the book by which she will be longest remembered.

Edgar Fawcett.—Edgar Fawcett (1847–1904) was in his day a prominent and popular poet, dramatist, and novelist. Born and reared in New York, and at twenty graduated from Columbia College, he early saw the rich possibilities of the life around him, and confined himself to the delineation of New York people. The best of his novels are “Rutherford” (written in 1876, but not published in book form till 1884), “A Hopeless Case” (1880), “A Gentleman of Leisure” (1881), “An Ambitious Woman” (1883), “The House at High Bridge” (1886), perhaps his best story, “Fair Fame” (1894), “Outrageous Fortune” (1894), and “The Ghost of Guy Thyrle” (1897). He was fond of attacking the petty conventions of social life and his satire was not ineffective. Partly because of this unpleasant realism his books have already ceased to be much read.

Edwin Lassetter Bynner.—Edwin L. Bynner (1842–93), a New England lawyer and journalist, for a time librarian of the Boston Law Library, achieved success in the field of the historical romance. Beginning with “Nimport” (1877), he produced a large number of novels and short stories, of which the best are “Penelope’s Suitors” (The Atlantic, December, 1884), “Agnes Surriage” (1887), “The Begum’s Daughter” (1889), a story of New Amsterdam in 1689, and “Zachary Phips” (1892), which introduces the mysterious Western expedition of Aaron Burr. Accurate on the historical side, his works are not distinguished artistic successes; yet they make the past live again.

Sarah Orne Jewett.—Sarah Orne Jewett (born in 1849) has written some interesting and even powerful stories of the coast of New England. She was reared at South Berwick, near the Maine coast. While accompanying her father, a physician, on his rounds, she heard from him many local and family histories and traditions. Her first story was “Deephaven” (1877); and she has since written, among others, “Country By-Ways” (1881), eight sketches; “The Mate of the Daylight, and Friends Ashore” (1884), short stories and sketches; “A Country Doctor” (1884), “A Marsh Island” (1885), and “A White Heron” (1886), three stories of rural New England; “Strangers and Wayfarers” (1890); “A Native of Winby, and Other Tales” (1893); “The Country of the Pointed Firs” (1896), which contains her most successful character studies; “The Queen’s Twin, and Other Stories” (1899); “The Tory Lover” (1901), a love-story of the Revolution, introducing John Paul Jones, which cannot be pronounced successful. Miss Jewett is at her best in her kindly humorous and sympathetic interpretations of humble but self-respecting New Englanders of the present day. Her humour is healthy and contagious and her style is for the most part simple, clear, and vigorous.

Mrs. Ellen Olney Kirk.—Ellen Olney Kirk (“Henry Hayes,” born in Connecticut in 1842) has been popular as a novelist. She received her education at Stratford, Conn., and was married to John Foster Kirk, the historian, in 1879. Her stories include “Love in Idleness” (1877), “A Lesson in Love” (1883), a study in character, “A Midsummer Madness” (1885), “The Story of Margaret Kent” (1886), “Queen Money” (1888), “The Story of Lawrence Garth” (1894), her best book, in which the difficult character of an adventuress is well drawn, “The Revolt of a Daughter” (1898), “Dorothy Deane” (1899), “Our Lady Vanity” (1901), “The Apology of Ayliffe” (1904), and “Marcia” (1907). The moral in her stories is generally not obtrusive and the humour is genial.

Edward Bellamy.—Edward Bellamy (1850–98), a native of Massachusetts, studied at Union College and in Germany, and in 1871 was admitted to the bar, but devoted his life to journalism and literature. After a year in the Sandwich Islands, in 1878 he published his first novel, “A Nantucket Idyl,” which was followed by “Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process” (1880), in its own way a supremely effective romance, and “Miss Ludington’s Sister, a Romance of Immortality” (1884), none of them very successful with the public. His best known work, “Looking Backward, or 2000–1887” (1888), a Utopian romance, was unexpectedly received as a gospel of socialism; it was widely read and translated into many languages. Much inferior artistically was its sequel, “Equality” (1897). In his best work Bellamy showed a rare gift of romantic portraiture of average types “in the village environment by which he interpreted the heart of the American nation.”

Mrs. Burton N. Harrison.—Mrs. Burton Harrison (born Constance Cary, at Vaucluse, Virginia, in 1846) has written interesting and highly realistic novels of New York City life, full of local colour and effective in background; and some novels of Virginia life. Mr. Harrison, to whom she was married in 1867, had been private secretary to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. The couple soon removed to New York, which has since been their permanent home. Mrs. Harrison’s first venture in literature was “A Little Centennial Lady” (Scribner’s Monthly, July, 1876), a sprightly historical sketch. Her novels dealing with Northern society are “Golden Rod” (1878), “Helen Troy” (1881), “The Anglomaniacs” (1890), “Sweet Bells out of Tune” (1893), “A Bachelor Maid” (1894), “An Errant Wooing” (1895), “Good Americans” (1897), “A Triple Entanglement” (1897), “The Carcelline Emerald” (1899), and “The Circle of a Century.” Perhaps the chief excellence of these stories is the dialogue, in the management of which Mrs. Harrison shows great skill. Although the attitude of the author is that of a satirist, her laughter at the foibles of society is not unkindly. Of Virginia she has written “Crow’s Nest and Bellhaven Tales” (1892) and “A Son of the Old Dominion” (1897), which deals with pre-Revolutionary times. “A Daughter of the South” (1892) is an exquisitely told story of New Orleans Creole life thrown into the environment of Paris under the Second Empire.

Charles Egbert Craddock.—Charles Egbert Craddock is the pen name of Mary Noailles Murfree (born in 1850), who contributed to The Atlantic for several years before it was suspected that her stories were written by a woman. She is the daughter of a once prominent lawyer of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who in 1883 removed to St. Louis. Because of an accident, Miss Murfree was for several years unable to walk. She was a diligent student and somehow gained an intimate knowledge of the mountaineers of Eastern Tennessee, who figure in all of her stories. Her first story of any importance was “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove” (The Atlantic, May, 1878). It was largely due to Mr. Aldrich’s urgent representations that her first collection of stories, “In the Tennessee Mountains,” found a publisher (1884). Of this a writer in The Nation said, with justice: “We have not only one mountain valley, but a whole country of hills—not a man and a woman here and there, but the people of a whole district—not merely a day of winter or of summer, but all the year—not lives, but life.” This is substantially true of all her works, in which she described prosaic and pathetic mountaineer life, being always inspired, however, by the solitude and grandeur of the Great Smoky Mountains. The list of her works is a long one: “Where the Battle was Fought” (1884); “Down the Ravine” (1885); “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains” (1885), which recounts the history of “a Bunyan worsted by his doubts”; “In the Clouds” (1887), a tragic story likewise dealing with religious experiences; “The Story of Keedon Bluffs” (1887); “The Despot of Broomsedge Cove” (1889), the plot of which hinges on a mysterious murder; “In the Stranger People’s Country” (1891); “His Vanished Star” (1894); “The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories” (1895); “The Juggler” (1897); “The Young Mountaineers” (1897), short stories; “The Champion” (1902); “A Spectre of Power” (1903), which is laid in the year 1763 and is full of Indian love; “The Frontiersmen” (1904); and “The Storm Centre” (1905). Her later work suffers from repetition of certain mannerisms and from excessive attention to description; possibly also from too rapid production. On the whole, however, in her ability to present the pathos and tragedy of simple lives, Miss Murfree has a place of honour among present-day writers.

Anna Katharine Green.—Through the publication, in 1878, of “The Leavenworth Case,” a clever detective story, this author, then a girl of nineteen, was brought into immediate notice on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Leavenworth Case” was followed in successive years by “A Strange Disappearance,” “The Sword of Damocles,” “Hand and Ring,” “Behind Closed Doors,” “Marked ‘Personal,’” “That Affair Next Door,” “Lost Man’s Lane,” “One of My Sons,” and other volumes. Some critics have spoken of Miss Green (who is now Mrs. Charles Rohlfs) as the “Wilkie Collins of America.” Nearly all of her books have appeared in transatlantic editions. Mrs. Rohlfs is also responsible for two volumes of poems, “The Defence of the Bride” (1882) and “Risifi’s Daughter” (1886).

Frank R. Stockton.—The unique and kindly humour of Mr. Stockton’s books attracted many readers. He was born in Philadelphia in 1834 and was the son of William S. Stockton, an ardent temperance reformer, abolitionist, and Methodist layman who helped to establish the Methodist Protestant Church. Educated in the schools of Philadelphia, young Stockton first tried the study of medicine, then worked as a wood-engraver for some years, devoting his leisure time to prose and verse writing. In 1872, he gave up wood-engraving to join the staff of the Philadelphia Morning Post, and for the next ten years was engaged in editorial and journalistic work on Scribner’s Monthly, St. Nicholas, Hearth and Home, etc. From 1882 until his death in 1902, Mr. Stockton was independently engaged in literary work, producing a large number of delightfully humorous stories and novels. The tale which made him famous was “Rudder Grange” (1879), which recounts the experiences of a young married couple who begin housekeeping in a castaway barge with an absurd handmaid named Pomona. “The Lady or the Tiger? and Other Stories” appeared in 1884; the title story is the best known of Stockton’s works. Other stories are “The Late Mrs. Null” (1886); “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine” (1886), a Crusoe-like narrative, a sequel to which is “The Dusantes” (1888); “The Hundredth Man” (1887); “The Merry Chanter” (1890); “The Squirrel Inn” (1891); “Pomona’s Travels” (1894), which narrates the wedding journey of the amusing Pomona through England and Scotland; “The Adventures of Captain Horn” (1895) and its sequel, “Mrs. Cliff’s Yacht” (1896), which deal with adventures in quest of the treasure of the Incas of Peru; “A Bicycle of Cathay” (1900); and “Afield and Afloat” (1901), a collection of short stories. While his style is remarkably simple and free from mannerisms, “the art that conceals art, until it can pass for nature itself,” his method of handling plot and character is distinctively his own. His reasoning is always logical, but he contrives that it shall bring about the most amusing absurdities conceivable. If, as one writer alleges, “his whimsicality played on the surface of men and things,” one may reply that that is precisely where it should play. His stories are none the less wholesome, even though he rarely or never touches on the pathetic. He was equally at home with the novel and the short story; but probably it is by his short stories that he will be longest known.

George Washington Cable.—George W. Cable (born in 1844) has immortalised the picturesque Creole life of Louisiana in the nineteenth century. Born in New Orleans of Virginian and New England stock, he had little school training and early became a clerk. At nineteen he entered the Confederate Army, serving till the close of the war. Then he became in succession a civil engineer and an accountant, contributing meanwhile to the New Orleans Picayune. Seven of his stories were collected and published in 1879 as “Old Creole Days.” “The Grandissimes” (1880), which remains his best work, is a graphic and faithful picture of New Orleans life of a century ago, embodying romance and realism. “Madame Delphine” (1881) is a touching story of a heroic old quadroon woman. In “Dr. Sevier” (1884), Cable has studied in romantic vein an exceptional type of character, though not with marked success. “Bonaventure, a Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana” (1888), a better book, is a chapter of ethical history. “Strange True Stories of Louisiana” appeared in 1889. Less interesting as fiction, but valuable as a social study, is “John March, Southerner” (1894), a story of Southern Reconstruction. “The Cavalier” (1901) goes back to the Civil War, but subordinates interest in the conflict to interest in character; while “Bylow Hill” (1902) is a tragic story of insane jealousy, the scene being New England. Since 1885, Mr. Cable has lived at Northampton, Massachusetts. His later work, like that of many another, has probably suffered from a natural tendency to subordinate the artistic to the ethical. But in the province which he has made his own, the pioneer remains supreme. “Few recent American novelists,” Professor Richardson justly remarks, “have shown so uniform an average of attainment in thought and art, or have thrown upon the quaintly real such new tints of ideal light.”

Albion Winegar Tourgee.—Albion W. Tourgee (1838–1905), an Ohioan, studied (1858–61) at the University of Rochester, saw service in the Union Army, and afterward became an editor and lawyer at Greensboro, North Carolina. Most of his novels deal with phases of the Reconstruction Period in the South. The best of these were: “A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools” (1879), doubtless his best known work, “Bricks Without Straw” (1880), and “The Invisible Empire” (1883). “Figs and Thistles” (1879) is a realistic story of early Ohio, in which the career of President Garfield is introduced; “Pactolus Prime” (1890) is the story of a Washington bootblack who has views on the negro problem. A man of strong opinions, Judge Tourgee could not write a novel which did not provoke thought; and he was by no means devoid of the true story-teller’s cunning.

The Eighties.—The decade of 1880–90 beheld the growth of realism to vigorous maturity. Romances not a few were written, to be sure, such as the “Ramona” (1884) of Mrs. Helen Fiske Jackson (“H. H.,” 1831–85), in which a romantic narrative clothes a strong plea for more humane treatment of the Indians, and the two Italian romances of William Waldorf Astor (born in 1848), “Valentino” (1885) and “Sforza, a Story of Milan” (1889). But these can hardly be called representative stories in a decade which saw the best work of Howells, James, Craddock, Fawcett, Bunner, Cable, and many others who wrote of the life they had seen and were content to employ present-day settings.

A few writers may here be grouped together for convenience. To the decade in question belong the best stories of George Parsons Lathrop (1851–98), the son-in-law of Hawthorne: “In the Distance” (1882), “An Echo of Passion” (1882), and “Would You Kill Him?” (1889), which amounts to a plea against capital punishment; and most of the fiction of Professor Arlo Bates (born in 1850): “The Pagans” (1884) and its sequel “The Philistines” (1889), “A Lad’s Love” (1887), though “The Puritans” dates from 1898. Fine pictures of Italian life have been drawn by Julia Constance Fletcher (“George Fleming,” born in 1853) in “Vestigia” (1882) and “Andromeda” (1885), the latter a story of high ideals and noble self-sacrifice. Illinois life in the unattractive baldness of pioneer days is portrayed by Major Joseph Kirkland (1830–94) in “Zury, the Meanest Man in Spring County” (1887) and “The McVeys, an Episode” (1888), in which Lincoln again figures as in Eggleston’s “Graysons.”

Henry Adams and John Hay.—“Democracy” (1880), an anonymous novel the authorship of which has hitherto baffled the critics, and which the present writer can now announce definitely to have been the work of the historian Henry Adams, is a keen and incisive study of political society in Washington, vividly portraying the corruption which perhaps inevitably attends the growth of the people’s power, but concerning which the author is all too pessimistic. The bribery case which aids Mrs. Lee in unmasking the real character of Silas P. Ratcliffe finds a parallel in our contemporary history; and several of the characters are thought to have been drawn from real life. Happily, whatever may have been the state of affairs in Washington in 1880, the story would be very far from a true picture of the Washington of to-day. John Hay (1838–1905), lawyer, journalist, diplomatist, and statesman, was the author of a single novel, and his connection with that has been, up to the appearance of the present volume, only a conjecture. Prudence, however, obviously, required that “The Bread-Winners” (1883) should appear anonymously. As a politician, and as acting editor of The Tribune, Mr. Hay did not then wish to avow himself the author of a “frivolous novel”; besides, in the story he had spoken rather plainly about strikes and labour troubles. The story itself is well written, natural, and for the most part true to life. Of the two love scenes, the proposal of Maud Matchin is more convincing than is Farnham’s to Alice Belding. The plot is well worked out; our interest in the story for itself almost never flags.

Joel Chandler Harris.—Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) used to describe himself as a journalist who became a literary man by accident. Few accidents have been luckier. He was born at Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia. At fourteen he began to set type in a country newspaper office, contributing surreptitiously to its columns, setting his articles from the case instead of committing them to paper. Then he studied law and practised for a time at Forsyth, Georgia, at the same time doing literary work. In 1876, he joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution, of which he became editor in 1890. To this paper he contributed the beast stories collected in 1881 under the title of “Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings,” which have ever since been immensely popular. Uncle Remus, a shrewd and witty old negro, has an inexhaustible supply of stories of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the other creatures; these “the little boy” and the rest of us never tire of hearing. The stories themselves, brought from Africa by the negroes, are interesting variant forms of the great beast epic, the classic example of which is “Reynard the Fox.”18 They celebrate the victory of craft over strength, of brain over brawn. Two other series afterward appeared, “Nights with Uncle Remus” (1883) and “Uncle Remus and His Friends” (1892); and now there is an Uncle Remus’ Magazine. Mr. Harris’ other books have helped to complete an admirably faithful picture of Middle Georgia rural life before, during, and after the Civil War. They include “At Teague Poteet’s” (published in 1883 in The Century), “Mingo, and Other Sketches in Black and White” (1884), “Free Joe” (1887), “Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories” (1891), in which melancholy and pathos predominate, “Aaron in the Wildwoods” (1897), “Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War” (1898), “The Chronicles of Aunt Minervy Ann” (1899), “On the Wing of Occasions” (1900). With the single exception of “Gabriel Tolliver” (1902), which was not successful, Mr. Harris’ constant work in journalism prevented him from undertaking any long novel of plantation life; shorter flights were better suited to his ability.

Maurice Thompson.—Maurice Thompson (1844–1901), of Indiana, wrote several romances. The first three, dealing with Southern life, “A Tallahassee Girl” (1882), “His Second Campaign” (1883), and “At Love’s Extremes” (1885), were not very successful. In “A Banker of Bankersville” (1886) he succeeded better, giving a true and fresh picture of life in Indiana. The novel by which he is best known is “Alice of Old Vincennes” (1901), a stirring tale of French Indiana and the War of Independence. “Sweetheart Manette” (1901) gives an agreeable sketch of life in a Creole town on the Gulf Coast.

Francis Marion Crawford.—“The most versatile and various of modern novelists,” if Mr. Andrew Lang’s opinion is to be accepted, is Mr. F. Marion Crawford. Not only has he been prolific in a high degree, having written over thirty novels, but his scenes and characters have a wide range both in time and in place. He was born at Bagni di Lucca, Italy, in 1854, the son of Thomas Crawford the sculptor (who was of Scotch-Irish parentage) and Louisa Ward Crawford, a sister of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. Prepared for college at St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, he entered Harvard, but remained there only a short time. He spent the years 1870–74 mainly at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1874–76 at Karlsruhe and Heidelberg, and 1877–78 at the University of Rome, where he studied Sanskrit. In 1879 he went to India and for two years was connected with the Allahabad Indian Herald. Returning to America, he spent two years in New York and Boston, continuing his Sanskrit and Zend studies under Professor Lanman of Harvard. No other American novelist save Mr. James has had so cosmopolitan a training. Relating a story of a Persian jewel merchant’s adventure in India to his uncle, Samuel Ward, he was advised to make a novel of it; the result was the fascinating “Mr. Isaacs” (1882). Soon afterward Mr. Crawford returned to Italy, where, near Sorrento, he has since lived.

Mr. Crawford has a gift of rapid composition, sometimes completing a novel in less than a month; but his work as a whole is markedly free from slovenliness or signs of undue haste. His stories can be only briefly described: “Dr. Claudius” (1883), a highly romantic old-fashioned love-story of a learned Heidelberg Ph.D.; “To Leeward” (1883), a clever story of a wife’s infidelity and of Roman society; “A Roman Singer” (1884), the story of an Italian peasant boy who became a great tenor and married a German countess; “An American Politician” (1885), which deals, in the style of Henry James, and with indifferent success, with the corruption in American politics; “Zoroaster” (1885), a strong romance written also in French, and brilliantly treating of the court of King Darius and the prophet Daniel; “A Tale of a Lonely Parish” (1886), a quiet and charming story of English rural life; “Paul Patoff” (1887), “a tale and nothing else,” the scene of which is laid in modern Constantinople; “Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887, written also in French), which is exceptional among his works in that it portrays Italian lower- and middle-class life, and which is considered by many his best work; “Saracinesca” (1887), “Sant’ Ilario” (1889), “Don Orsino” (1892), and “Corleone” (1898), four novels forming a sequence and presenting on a broad canvas a remarkable picture of Roman society in the last third of the nineteenth century; “Greifenstein” (1889), a tragedy of the Black Forest, “a true story,” containing accurate descriptions of German student life; “A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance” (1890), a perfectly constructed romantic and absorbing story of Russian and Polish people living in Munich; “Khaled, a Romance of Arabia” (1891), of which a genie is the hero; “The Witch of Prague” (1891), which deals with hypnotism, a theme difficult to handle in fiction; “The Three Fates” (1892), a realistic story of New York society life and the best of Mr. Crawford’s American studies; “Marion Darche” (1893), another story of New York and of the devotion of a forger’s wife; “The Children of the King” (1893), a melodramatic story of Calabrian peasant life; “Pietro Ghisleri” (1893), in which both romantic and realistic elements are found and which pictures the gay society of Rome; “Katharine Lauderdale” and its sequel “The Ralstons” (1894), chronicles of a New York family; “Casa Braccio” (1895), a melodrama of passion; “Taquisara” (1896), an unpleasant story of the last representative of a great Saracen family and a princess of Acireale; “Via Crucis” (1899), a historical romance of the Second Crusade; “In the Palace of the King” (1900), a tale of passion, the hero of which is Don John of Austria, and the scene of which is the court of Philip II. of Spain; “Marietta, a Maid of Venice” (1901), a fifteenth-century story; “The Heart of Rome” (1903), the motif of which is modern Rome’s treatment of its artistic heritage; “Fair Margaret” (1905), published in London as “Soprano, a Portrait,” recounting the fascinating career of Margaret Donne, who becomes a successful opera singer; “Whosoever Shall Offend” (1905), an effective story of crime; and “A Lady of Rome” (1906), a study of character moulded by strong religious belief.

Of this remarkable series, the most noteworthy, though probably not the most popular, are those dealing with Italian life. Mr. Crawford has been markedly successful in his portraiture of Italian middle-class life, and only a little less so in writing of the aristocracy. He excels in representing agreeable, well-bred men and women; under his touch they are natural, human, lifelike. He is fertile in invention and lavish of characters and plot-incident, using in quite a subordinate connection materials which other novelists would reserve for the main plots of future novels. In general, his plots are skilfully constructed; occasionally, as in “Taquisara” (which is almost two separate stories), he fails to weld his material insolubly together. He has a remarkably bold and vigorous imagination, and does not hesitate to introduce daring conceptions and incidents; a romantic cast of mind is necessary if one would fully enjoy him. A Roman Catholic himself, he has had the amplest opportunity for studying the Catholic temperament and point of view, which he interprets admirably; it is natural that he should be weakest in portraying the characters of unbelievers or heretics. He is always dispassionate, calm, never losing himself in any storm of passion. His fiction as a whole is remarkably even, and it cannot be affirmed that his latest work shows deterioration. For the skill with which he has utilised vast stores of learning, for the effective though restrained use of a virile and picturesque imagination, for “astonishing literary tact” and breadth of view, Mr. Crawford has not his equal among living American writers, and his place is among the writers who only just miss the first rank.

Frederic Jesup Stimson.—Frederic J. Stimson, a native of Dedham, Massachusetts (born in 1855), has led a busy life as lawyer, legal writer, Harvard professor, and novelist. His earlier novels were published over the pen name of “J. S. of Dale.” He has written, among others, “Guerndale” (1882), “The Crime of Henry Vane” (1884), the plot of which is unconvincing, “First Harvests” (1888), “Mrs. Knollys and Other Stories” (1894), “Pirate Gold” (1896), “King Noanett” (1896), carefully worked out, an exciting story of mystery and adventure, “Jethro Bacon of Sandwich” (1902), and “In Cure of Her Soul” (1906). Mr. Stimson has not taken high rank as a novelist, but his stories are generally interesting and the later ones may be commended to those who are fond of good romances. “The Weaker Sex” (The Atlantic, April, 1901) is a powerful short story.

Henry Cuyler Bunner.—Henry C. Bunner (1855–96), for many years the editor of Puck, wrote many short stories and some good novels. He was a native of Oswego, New York, and received his literary training in the school of journalism, being connected first with The Sun and then with The Arcadian, a literary weekly. “A Woman of Honor” (1883) gave some promise in plot and incident. “Love in Old Cloathes” (The Century, September, 1883) brought him a reputation as a clever story-teller. His next novel, “The Midge,” an ingenious story of the New York French quarter, appeared in 1886; it was followed by “The Story of a New York House” (1887), the somewhat melancholy history of a house, typifying the family which occupies it. “Natural Selection” appeared serially in Scribner’s (1888). “Zadoc Pine, and Other Stories” (1891) are tales the skilful construction of which shows how carefully Bunner studied Boccaccio; while in “Short Sixes” (1891), his most popular stories, he avowed his discipleship to Maupassant. He was more successful in his short stories than in his novels.

Arthur Sherburne Hardy.—Arthur S. Hardy (born in 1847 at Andover, Mass.), in 1902–6 United States Minister Plenipotentiary at Madrid, has had a varied career. Graduating at West Point in 1869, he served for a year in the Third United States Artillery, then became in succession professor of civil engineering, first at Iowa College, later at Dartmouth, professor of mathematics at Dartmouth, editor of The Cosmopolitan, and United States Minister to Persia, to Greece, Roumania, and Servia, and to Switzerland. Well known for several mathematical publications, he is the author of three novels, two of which are distinguished for happy description, graceful diction, and profound reflection rather than for individuality of plot or able development of character. “But Yet a Woman” (1883) is a story, somewhat deficient in local colour, of the coming of love to a French maiden destined for the convent. “The Wind of Destiny” (1886) is a story of a weak woman and two men which, though it lacks dramatic interest, offers some compensation in “the peculiarly noble air which pervades it, the extreme beauty of many of its passages, the revelation of life flashed occasionally as from a diamond of light, and perhaps more than all for the very subtle charm which hangs over the whole movement of the story.”19 “Passe Rose” (1889) is a charming poetical romance of Provence in the stirring times of Charles the Great, and is decidedly Mr. Hardy’s most successful novel. His latest story is “His Daughter First” (1903). With rare sympathy, which he makes no attempt to conceal, he has interpreted several diverse types, and his men and women are alive.

Mary Hallock Foote.—Born at Milton-on-the-Hudson, New York, in 1847, Mary Hallock early showed artistic talent and at sixteen began to study design in Cooper Institute, New York City. She was married in 1876 to Arthur D. Foote, a California mining engineer, and travelled extensively in the Southwest. Her varied experiences have been utilised with marked literary skill in a series of stories, the first of which was “The Led Horse Claim” (1883), in which the story of Romeo and Juliet was repeated in a California mining camp, though with a happy ending. “The Chosen Valley” (1892) is a study in contrasts, recounting an episode in the reclaiming by irrigation of the waste lands of the West. In 1894 appeared “Cœur d’Alene,” a love-story with a background in the labour troubles. She has also written “John Bowdoin’s Testimony” (1886), “The Last Assembly Ball” (1889), “In Exile” (1894), and “The Cup of Trembling” (1895). Her latest stories, “The Desert and the Sown” (1902), a study of ideal self-sacrifice, and “A Touch of Sun, and Other Stories” (1903), are hardly up to the level of her earlier work, which, in its vivid representation of wild Western life, entitles her to a place with Bret Harte.

Wolcott Balestier.—The promise of the too short life of Charles Wolcott Balestier (1861–91) deserves record. He was born at Rochester, New York, studied at Cornell University and the University of Virginia, and became first the editor of Tid-Bits and then the junior partner of Heinemann & Balestier, publishers of The English Library, an attempt to popularise British and American books on the Continent. His interest in literature was intense, and that he would have produced stories worth remembering, doubtless in the vein of Mr. Howells, whom he greatly admired, is evidenced by his few published works: “A Patent Philtre” (1884), “A Fair Device” (1884), “A Victorious Defeat” (1886), “A Common Story” (1891), “The Average Woman” (1892), three stories, with a memorial note by Henry James, and “Benefits Forgot” (1891), first published serially in The Century. With Mr. Kipling, his brother-in-law, he collaborated in “The Naulahka” (1892).

Robert Grant.—Born in Boston (1852), Robert Grant graduated from Harvard in 1873 and became Ph.D. in 1876 and LL.B. in 1879. He has followed law and letters side by side. In 1893 he was appointed Judge of the Probate Court and the Court of Insolvency for Suffolk County, Massachusetts. He has written, among other things, “The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl” (1880), “An Average Man” (1884), “The Knave of Hearts” (1886), “The Reflections of a Married Man” (1892), “The Opinions of a Philosopher” (1893), “The Bachelor’s Christmas, and Other Stories” (1895), and “Unleavened Bread” (1900), his best known and most powerful story. Mr. Grant is a trenchant satirist of the foibles of certain aspirants to social prominence. Selma, in “Unleavened Bread,” is a veritable incarnation of ignoble social ambition.

Henry Harland.—Henry Harland (1861–1905) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and was educated at the College of the City of New York, Harvard, Paris, and Rome. In 1886 he removed to London, where he became well known as the editor of The Yellow Book. His earlier stories, including “As It Was Written” (1885), a musician’s story, “Mrs. Peixada” (1886), “The Land of Love” (1887), “My Uncle Florimond” (1888), and others, were published as by “Sidney Luska”; they circulated widely but were later condemned by Harland himself as trashy. He later wrote “Mea Culpa” (1893), “Comedies and Errors” (1898), “The Cardinal’s Snuff-Box” (1900), which scored a decided success, and “My Lady Paramount” (1902). His brilliance and geniality are reflected in his works, but his vein was not an extensive one.

Thomas Nelson Page.—One of the leading novelists of the South to-day is Thomas Nelson Page. Born in 1853 at Oakland, Virginia, he studied (1869–72) at Washington and Lee University and (1873–74) at the University of Virginia. After practising law for some years, he turned, like many other lawyers, to literature. “Marse Chan” (The Century, April, 1884) met with great favour, and was followed by other short stories, which were collected in 1887 under the title “In Ole Virginia.” The life in Virginia before and during the war was further presented in “Two Little Confederates” (1888), “On New Found River” (1891), “Elsket, and Other Stories” (1891), “The Burial of the Guns, and Other Stories” (1894), “Red Rock, a Chronicle of Reconstruction” (1898), “The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock” (1900), and “Gordon Keith” (1903). Mr. Page has a strong affection for the Old South, and vividly and powerfully delineates the life of the aristocracy and the negroes. While sympathetic, his descriptions of the system of slavery are free from bitterness and are entitled to consideration as truthful and convincing. Probably he has never surpassed his earlier short stories, which exhibit most distinctively the charm of his style; but “Red Rock,” at least, has demonstrated his ability to write successfully also on a larger scale.

Thomas Allibone Janvier.—Thomas A. Janvier (born in 1849), a native of Philadelphia, became a New York journalist and then a writer of stories. He has been especially successful in depicting the Bohemian life of the metropolis. His “Color Studies: Four Stories” (1885), reprinted from The Century, narrate the struggles of a painter in New York; though slight, they are realistic and agreeable. Having made an exhaustive study of Mexico, he put his knowledge to good use in “The Aztec Treasure House: a Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity” (1890), a successful romantic novel dealing with a legend of buried treasure and a story of wholesome flavour and sustained interest. He has also written “Stories of Old New Spain” (1895) and several others.

Some New England Women.—Here may be grouped several gifted daughters of the Puritans, some of whom deserve more space than can be given them. Mrs. Jane Goodwin Austin (1831–94) wrote several readable historical romances of colonial New England. Among her works are “A Nameless Nobleman” (1881), “Dr. Le Baron and His Daughters” (1890), sequel to the first, “Standish of Standish” (1889), and “David Alden’s Daughter and Other Stories” (1892).

Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke (1827–92), a native of Connecticut, was known as a poet for many years before she began to write short stories. She published the following collections: “Happy Dodd” (1879), “Somebody’s Neighbours” (1881), “Root-Bound” (1885), “The Sphinx’s Children” (1886), and “Huckleberries Gathered from New England Hills” (1891). “The Deacon’s Week” (1884) may count as her best story. In all her stories the humours of New England Yankee character are set forth with vigour and relish. She wrote a single novel, “Steadfast, the Story of a Saint and a Sinner” (1889), dealing with early New England church life, and ranking much above the average novel.

Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, likewise of Connecticut, has shown skill in dialect stories, of which “Fishin’ Jimmy” (1889), “Seven Dreamers” (1890), “The Heresy of Mehetabel Clark” (1892), and “Dumb Foxglove, and Other Stories” (1898) may be mentioned. The grotesque elements of New England life especially appeal to her.

Mrs. Clara Louise Burnham (born at Newton, Massachusetts, in 1854) has lived in Chicago since childhood, but is fond of locating her scenes in New England. She has written many stories, among them “No Gentleman” (1881), “A Sane Lunatic” (1882), “Dearly Bought” (1884), “Next Door” (1886), “Young Maids and Old” (1888), “Miss Bagg’s Secretary” (1892), “Dr. Latimer” (1893), “The Wise Woman” (1895), “A West Point Wooing” (1899), and “The Right Princess” (1902).

Alice Brown (born in New Hampshire in 1857), after teaching school for several years, devoted herself to literature, and is now a member of the staff of The Youth’s Companion. She has written “Fools of Nature” (1887), “Meadow-Grass” (1895), short tales of New England village life, “The Day of His Youth” (1897), a story of disillusionment, “Tiverton Tales” (1899), “King’s End” (1901), “Margaret Warrener” (1901), “The Mannerings” (1903), and “High Noon” (1904). Her stories are skilfully constructed, and she writes with commendable restraint and dignity.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.—The more sombre and less attractive aspects of New England village and country life have been presented with great success in the numerous stories of Mary E. Wilkins (since 1902 Mrs. Charles M. Freeman). Born at Randolph, Massachusetts, in 1862, she was educated at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass. Her stories include “The Adventures of Ann” (1886), “A Humble Romance” (1887), “A New England Nun, and Other Stories” (1891), “Jane Field” (1892), her first novel, “Pembroke” (1894), generally considered her greatest work, and distinguished for beauty of style and truthful and delicate character-drawing, “Madelon” (1896), “Jerome, a Poor Man” (1897), by some ranked higher than “Pembroke” in that it has a stronger central interest, “Silence and Other Stories” (1898), which includes some of her best work, especially “Evelina’s Garden,” one of her most artistic tales, “The Love of Parson Lord” (1900), “The Heart’s Highway” (1900), a historical romance of Virginia in 1682, “The Portion of Labour” (1901), “Understudies” (1901), “Six Trees” (1903), “The Wind in the Rose Bush” (1903), “The Givers,” eight stories (1904), and several magazine stories. Her place is easily in the first rank of those who have delineated New England life.

Harold Frederic.—Harold Frederic (1856–98) wrote a number of realistic stories, chiefly of country life in New York. A native of Utica, in that State, he began his career as proof-reader; at twenty-six he was editor of the Albany Evening Journal, and in 1884 he took charge of the foreign bureau of the New York Times, with headquarters in London. “Seth’s Brother’s Wife” (1887), first published serially in Scribner’s, minutely describes the prosaic round of farming life and country journalism and elections. “The Lawton Girl” (1890) gives us the turmoil of a small manufacturing town. “In the Valley” (1890) is a Mohawk Dutchman’s story of the Revolutionary struggle. “The Copperhead, and Other Stories of the North” (1893) and “Marséna, and Other Stories” (1894) are collections of Civil War stories, vigorous and daring. His best stories are “The Damnation of Theron Ware” (1896, published in England as “Illumination”), an absorbing study of the intellectual career of an earnest but narrow young Methodist minister and of the struggle of two religious ideals in his life, and “The Market-Place” (1899), a thoroughgoing study of the London Stock Exchange. His untimely death cut short a career of notable achievement and great promise.

Archibald Clavering Gunter.—Archibald Clavering Gunter (1847–1907), a native of Liverpool who became a California mining and civil engineer, chemist, and stock-broker, at forty began to write novels which violated most of the literary canons, but which in plot and incident were of absorbing interest. It was his avowed rule to make something happen in every five hundred words. This explains why a million copies of his first novel, “Mr. Barnes of New York” (1887), have been sold. He wrote thirty-nine novels in all, the best of which, in addition to his first, are “Mr. Potter of Texas” (1888), “That Frenchman” (1889), “Jack Curzon” (1899), and “A Manufacturer’s Daughter” (1901). He also became well known as a playwright.

Octave Thanet.—Octave Thanet is the well known pen name of Alice French (born at Andover, Massachusetts, in 1850), who has achieved enviable success in her short stories of life in Iowa and Arkansas, a field in which she has few rivals. These stories include “Knitters in the Sun” (1887), “Expiation” (1890), vigorous, truly coloured, and accurate in details, “Stories of a Western Town” (1893), Iowa sketches, “The Missionary Sheriff” (1897), and “The Heart of Toil” (1898), full of the pathos of an unequal struggle with economic forces. Miss French writes sympathetically, with her eyes on the men and women who furnish her with characters.

Margaret Deland.—One of the most popular of living novelists, and justly so, is Mrs. Margaret Deland. Born Margaretta Campbell, in 1857, in Manchester, now a part of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, then a village “of dignified houses, pleasant gardens, and meadows sloping to a picturesque river,” she was left an orphan at three and was cared for by an aunt. At sixteen, like Mrs. Foote, she entered a class in drawing and design in Cooper Institute, New York; she graduated at the head of her class, and won an appointment as instructor in design in the Girls’ Normal College, a post which she filled till 1880. Then she was married to Mr. Lorin F. Deland and went to Boston. Eight years later appeared her first novel, “John Ward, Preacher.” It is the story of the conflict of rigid Calvinism and modern liberalism, and it has been compared with Mrs. Ward’s “Robert Elsmere.” Two love-stories, one of which recalls Mrs. Gaskell’s “Cranford,” relieve the tragic gloom of the narrative. Ashurst is an idealised Manchester. In “Sidney” (1890) the author studies the question of the value of mortal sexual love; the problems of faith and doubt also recur. “The Story of a Child” (1892) delineates an uncontrolled imagination. “Mr. Tommy Dove, and Other Stories” (1893) is a collection including typical humour and pathos. “Philip and His Wife” (1894) has to do with an unhappy marriage. Her recent stories are “The Wisdom of Fools” (1898), “Old Chester Tales” (1899), “Dr. Lavendar’s People” (1904), and “The Awakening of Helena Richie” (1906). Big-hearted, shrewd Dr. Lavendar, who figures in her last two stories, is one of the most lovable characters in American fiction; and her latest books show a distinctly stronger grasp of life and greater narrative power.

Mrs. Mary Hartwell Catherwood.—Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847–1902) made a name for herself with some very successful historical romances of the French and Indian Wars and French Canadian and early Illinois life. “The Romance of Dollard” (1889), “The Lady of Fort St. John” (1891), “The White Islander” (1893), and “The Chase of Saint Castin, and Other Stories” (1894) are spirited narratives of battle and siege, of intrigue and jealousy, in which bold and noble characters play their parts well, and which contain vivid descriptions of scenery—in sunshine and storm. Of the early Middle West she wrote “Old Kaskaskia” (1893), “The Spirit of an Illinois Town” (1897), “Little Renault” (1897), “Spanish Peggy” (1899), “The Queen of the Swamp, and Other Plain Americans” (1899), and “Lazarre” (1901).

Rowland E. Robinson.—The dialect and manners of Vermont are reproduced with remarkable fidelity by Rowland E. Robinson (1833–1900) in “Sam Lovel’s Camps” (1889), “Danvis Folks” (1894), and “Uncle ’Lisha’s Shop” (1897). These stories are among our most valuable transcripts of the life of Northern New England.

Francis Hopkinson Smith.—F. Hopkinson Smith (born in Baltimore, 1838) had a varied career before he essayed the novel, at fifty-three. He began life as a clerk in some iron works; then, becoming an engineer and contractor, he took to building sea-walls and lighthouses, and afterwards became well known as an artist. In “Colonel Carter of Cartersville” (1891) he drew an alluring picture of the old régime in the South. “A Gentleman Vagabond, and Some Others” (1895) are varied character stories. “Tom Grogan” (1896) and “Caleb West, Master Diver” (1898) draw upon Mr. Smith’s engineering experiences. He has also written “The Other Fellow” (1899), “The Fortunes of Oliver Horn” (1902), “The Under Dog” (1903), “Colonel Carter’s Christmas” (1904), “At Close Range” (1905), and “The Wood Fire in No. 3” (1905). If some of his persons are conventional and indistinct, others stand out as skilfully characterised and permanent figures in his literary gallery.

James Lane Allen.—James Lane Allen has done for Kentucky what Mr. Page has done for Old Virginia and Miss Murfree for the Tennessee mountaineers. A native of Kentucky (born in 1849), he graduated from Transylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, and taught in schools and colleges for some years. Since 1884, however, he has devoted himself to literary work. Besides writing much for magazines he has published “Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances” (1891), “The Blue Grass Region, and Other Sketches” (1892), “John Gray” (1893), rewritten and enlarged into “The Choir Invisible” (1897), “A Kentucky Cardinal” (1894) and its sequel “Aftermath” (1895), “Summer in Arcady” (1896), “The Reign of Law” (1900), published in England as “The Increasing Purpose,” and “The Mettle of the Pasture” (1903). A tendency toward didacticism and a lack of spontaneity mar the latest works of Mr. Allen; he is at his best in his earlier works, in which he revels in the beauty of the Blue Grass region and writes in the spirit of a disciple of Thoreau and Audubon. The romanticist in him was gradually transformed into the objective realist. Yet in all his work there are elements of strength and poetic beauty. By a curious coincidence another Kentucky James Lane Allen (born in 1848) a graduate of Bethany College, in which the first Mr. Allen taught, and now a Chicago lawyer, has also written numerous magazine sketches and stories.

Hamlin Garland.—The grim, dull life of the hard-worked farmer in the Middle West has been effectively recorded by Hamlin Garland. A native of La Crosse, Wisconsin (born in 1860), Mr. Garland saw at close range the life he was to describe, in Iowa, Illinois, and Dakota. His first book was a collection of six realistic stories, “Main-Travelled Roads” (1891), which gave him a reputation, and he has continued to write in similar vein, publishing “Prairie Folks” (1892), “A Little Norsk, or Ol’ Pap’s Flaxen” (1892), “A Spoil of Office” (1892), “Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly” (1895), his best novel, “The Eagle’s Heart” (1900), “Her Mountain Lover” (1901), and “Money Magic” (1907). Mr. Garland has for the most part wisely obeyed his own dictum, to write only of what one knows; and his later work shows a notable increase in vigour and grasp of the story-teller’s art.

Henry Blake Fuller.—Henry B. Fuller (born in Chicago, 1857) was intended for a mercantile career, but preferred literature. “The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani” (1890), first published anonymously, was praised by Lowell and Norton. In 1892 appeared “The Chatelaine of La Trinité.” In “The Cliff-Dwellers” (1893), he turned from the romantic to a sure realism in a story of Chicago life. “With the Procession” followed in 1895, being in similar vein. These stories show skill in individualisation, intense earnestness, facility, and ability to make an old theme interesting. “His picture,” says Mr. Whibley, “is never overcharged; his draughtsmanship is always sincere.”

Stephen Crane and Frank Norris.—Stephen Crane (1870–1900), born in Newark, New Jersey, and educated at Lafayette College and Syracuse University, first entered journalism and won some distinction as a war correspondent of the New York Journal. His first story, dealing with slum life, was “Maggie, a Girl of the Streets” (1891), which, as Mr. Howells thinks, remains his best work. “The Red Badge of Courage” (1895), a thoroughly realistic study of the mind of a soldier in action at the battle of Chancellorsville, was altogether a remarkable achievement; it took the public by storm and brought the author a wide reputation, which was not sustained by his later work. He also wrote “George’s Mother” (1896), another slum story, “The Little Regiment” (1896), “Active Service” (1899), “The Monster, and Other Stories” (1899); and two collections of stories, “Wounds in the Rain” and “Whilomville Stories” (1900), tales of child life, which were published posthumously. His impressionism, though at times too little restrained, was often effective, and his highly coloured stories have found many admiring readers.

In the death of Frank Norris (1870–1902), another promising career was cut short. Norris managed to see a good deal of life. Born in Chicago, he studied art in Paris (1887–89) and literature at the University of California and Harvard. Like Crane he became a journalist. At the time of the Jameson Raid in South Africa he was the South African correspondent for a San Francisco paper and in 1898 did similar work in Cuba. He began publishing fiction as early as 1891 (“Yberville”), but it was not till 1899 that he became well known for “McTeague.” His later stories were thoroughly realistic. With “The Octopus” (1901) he began a trilogy which should form “an epic of the wheat.” In the first novel is described the growth of the wheat and the oppressive railroad monopoly encountered in its transportation. “The Pit” (1903) deals with the battles of the wheat speculators. “The Wolf,” unfinished, was to have dealt with the struggle for bread in a European famine-stricken community. “The story of the wheat was for him,” as Mr. Howells puts it, “the allegory of the industrial and financial America which is the real America.” The largeness of the scope of his undertaking and the robust courage and confidence with which he attacked it deserve our admiration. What he accomplished shows that he would have been equal to his task.

Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart.—Mrs. Stuart has written highly amusing stories of negro life in the South. Born in the parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana, she was married in 1879 to Alfred O. Stuart, a cotton planter. Since 1885 she has lived in New York. Her stories include “The Golden Wedding, and Other Tales” (1893), “Carlotta’s Intended” (1894), “The Story of Babette” (1894), “Moriah’s Mourning” (1898), “Sonny” (1896), “Holly and Pizen” (1899), “The Woman’s Exchange” (1899), and “River’s Children” (1905). Writing in a natural and witty style, she has brought out with great skill the humour and pathos of the old plantation. She is a favourite contributor to the magazines.

Paul Leicester Ford.—Paul Leicester Ford (1865–1902), whose most serious and permanently valuable work was done in the field of American history, was the author of some notable works of fiction. “The Honourable Peter Sterling and What People Thought of Him” (1894) introduces an ideally noble statesman whose integrity triumphs over the sordid corruption of politics. Some points in the book are said to have been suggested by the career of President Cleveland. “Janice Meredith” (1899) is a sentimental romance of the Revolutionary War, in which a fascinating love-story is projected on an accurate historical background. Of less importance, but still most readable, are “The Great K. & A. Train Robbery” (1897) and “The Story of an Untold Love” (1897).

Edward Noyes Westcott.—Edward N. Westcott (1847–98), a banker of Syracuse, New York, was the author of a single book, which he was unable to get published in his lifetime, but which gave him posthumous fame. The hero of “David Harum” (1898) is a shrewd Central New York Yankee, a son of the soil who with characteristic energy rose to be a banker and successful man of affairs, and who retained all his amusing traits, including a weakness for trading horses—“an optimist who has wrung from the harsh conditions of life all that it can yield.” The other characters are rather wooden, but the delineation of David Harum is strong, vital, and hence lasting. The plot is weak, but the story is true to the phases of life it depicts.

The Younger Generation.—Space forbids more than a mention of some of the other living writers. Owen Wister (born in Philadelphia, 1860) has become well known through “The Dragon of Wantley: His Tail” (1892) and “The Virginian” (1902), in which latter we have an exciting story of a Wyoming cowboy. The much-travelled Richard Harding Davis (also a Philadelphian, born in 1864) has written racy and characteristically humorous stories of New York club and street life in “Gallegher, and Other Stories” (1891), “Van Bibber, and Others” (1892), and “Episodes in Van Bibber’s Life” (1899). Of his other stories the best known are “The Princess Aline” (1895), “Soldiers of Fortune” (1897), in which a South American revolution figures prominently, “In the Fog” (1901), a clever London tale, “Ranson’s Folly” (1902), and “The Bar Sinister” (1904). Robert W. Chambers (born in Brooklyn, 1865) is well known both as an artist and a romancer, a weaver of strange and exciting plots. Among his best books are “The Red Republic” (1894), “A King and a Few Dukes” (1894), “The Haunts of Men” (1898), stories of American or Canadian life, “The Cambric Mask” (1899), “A Gay Conspiracy” (1900), which shows the influence of Anthony Hope’s “Prisoner of Zenda,” “Cardigan” (1901), and “Iole” (1905). Newton Booth Tarkington (born in 1869 in Indianapolis, a graduate of Princeton) won fame in 1899 with “The Gentleman from Indiana” and has followed this with “Monsieur Beaucaire” (1900), a romance laid in Bath in the eighteenth century, “The Two Vanrevels” (1902), “Cherry” (1903), “In the Arena” (1905), “The Conquest of Canaan” (1905), and “The Beautiful Lady” (1905). His later work shows a gain in power. Winston Churchill (born in 1871), a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and now a resident of New Hampshire, published “The Celebrity” in 1898. “Richard Carvel” (1899) made him famous; it is a Revolutionary story of Maryland and London. He has since written “The Crisis” (1901), a substantial story of the Civil War, “Mr. Keegan’s Elopement” (1903), “The Crossing” (1904), and “Coniston” (1906), a New England story of love and politics. The mountaineer life of Kentucky furnishes John Fox, Jr., with the materials for his well told stories, “A Cumberland Vendetta, and Other Stories” (1896), “The Kentuckians” (1897), “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” (1903), and “A Knight of the Cumberland” (1906).

Mrs. Gertrude Franklin Atherton (born in San Francisco, 1857) has made a wide reputation with her stories of early California life; some critics declare, however, that they do not accurately represent the California of old days. The first of them was “The Doomswoman” (1892). Other novels are “A Whirl Asunder” (1895), “Patience Sparhawk and Her Times” (1897), “The Californians” (1898), “American Wives and English Husbands” (1898), and “The Conqueror” (1902), which is based on the life of Alexander Hamilton. Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin (born in Philadelphia in 1857 and married to Samuel B. Wiggin in 1880) has written charming juvenile stories, “The Birds’ Christmas Carol” (1888), “The Story of Patsy” (1889), and “Timothy’s Quest” (1890), besides some stories of travel, such as “A Cathedral Courtship” (1893) and “Penelope’s Progress” (1898). Her husband died in 1889, and in 1895 she was married to George C. Riggs.

Irving Bacheller (born in 1859), a New York journalist, attracted attention by his stories, “The Master of Silence” (1890) and “The Still House of O’Darrow” (1894). His “Eben Holden” (1900), a novel of northern New York, was very successful. He has since written “Darrel of the Blessed Isles” (1903) and “Vergilius” (1904). Robert Herrick (born in 1868), a Harvard graduate and now a Chicago University professor, has written searching studies of American society in “The Gospel of Freedom” (1898), “The Web of Life” (1900), “The Real World” (1901), and “The Common Lot” (1904). He is something of a pessimist, but not unwholesome.

Edith Wharton (born in New York in 1862) began her literary career with short stories of the metropolitan society with which she had been familiar from birth: “The Greater Inclination” (1899), eight stories, “A Gift from the Grave” (1900), and “Crucial Instances” (1901). In “The Valley of Decision” (1902), “Sanctuary” (1903), and “The House of Mirth” (1905), she deals with scenes and characters of deep human interest but not easily managed; and she acquits herself with credit. Lily Bart is distinctly individualised and is worthy to be compared with Becky Sharp and Gwendolen Harleth.

Upton Sinclair (born in Baltimore, 1878), after writing a number of novels, produced in “Manassas” (1904) a thrilling romantic novel of the years just preceding the Civil War. “The Jungle” (1906), though much better known, is artistically far inferior to it. The creed of socialism is professed by both Mr. Sinclair and Jack London (born in San Francisco in 1876). London left the University of California to go to the Klondike, afterward went to Japan, and has since tramped through America and Canada for sociological study. In his best works, “The Son of the Wolf” (1900), “The Call of the Wild” (1903), and “The Sea Wolf” (1904), he has chosen to depict the tragedies of the animal world and the elemental passions in man.

Three Virginia women novelists have won distinction in recent years.

Molly Elliot Seawell (born in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1860), a resident of Washington, began writing fiction in 1886. Among her stories are “Throckmorton” (1890), “Little Jarvis” (1890), a Youth’s Companion prize story, “Midshipman Paulding” (1891), “The Sprightly Romance of Marsac” (1896), a lively story that won a New York Herald prize of $3000, “The Lively Adventures of Gavin Hamilton” (1899), “The House of Egremont” (1901), “Children of Destiny” (1903), and “The Great Scoop” (1905). Her plots are sometimes slight and inconsequential, and her narrative lacks reserve; but she shows skill in the management of dialogue, and is a favourite writer.

Ellen Glasgow (born in Richmond in 1874) has found many readers with her “Descendant” (1897), “Phases of an Inferior Planet” (1898), “The Voice of the People” (1900), “The Battle-Ground” (1902), and “The Deliverance” (1904). She does not manage to escape from improbabilities, and some of her plots are desultory; yet on the whole her work maintains a high average.

Mary Johnston (born at Buchanan, Virginia, in 1870) has realised the possibilities of early Virginia history in her successful romances, “Prisoners of Hope” (1898), published in England as “The Old Dominion,” “To Have and to Hold” (1900), in England called “By Order of the Company,” “Audrey” (1902), and “Sir Mortimer” (1904). She has a sure touch, and her narrative moves rapidly.

But we have already exceeded the limits of our space. The work of Margaret Sherwood, William A. White, Brand Whitlock, Will Payne, Meredith Nicholson, George Barr McCutcheon, Jesse Lynch Williams, David Graham Phillips, Mary R. Shipman Andrews, James B. Connolly, Nelson Lloyd, George Cary Eggleston, William N. Harben, Justus Miles Forman, and many others, excellent as much of it is, can only be referred to summarily. The great number of promising writers of to-day is a matter of congratulation.

Retrospect and Conclusion.—We have thus traced the American novel from its first crude beginnings through a little more than a century of healthy and constant growth. It took the American novelist some three or four decades to learn to stand on his own feet; since he has learned to walk he has required very little assistance from abroad. More and more the possibilities of American life have attracted the writers of prose fiction. In the earlier decades of the last century, as was the case in Europe, the romance was the only fiction in demand; and the romance has ever been the favourite of many readers who maintain that the chief function of literature is to give reality through the alembic of the imagination. Perhaps the creed of romanticism has never been better put than by Mr. Julian Hawthorne:

The value of fiction lies in the fact that it can give us what actual existence cannot; that it can resume in a chapter the conclusions of a lifetime; that it can omit the trivial, the vague, the redundant, and select the significant, the forcible, and the characteristic; that it can satisfy expectation, expose error, and vindicate human nature. Life, as we experience it, is too vast, its relations are too complicated, its orbit too comprehensive, ever to give us the impression of individual completeness and justice; but the intuition of these things, though denied to sense, is granted to faith, and we are authorised to embody that interior conviction in romance.... And stories of imagination are truer than transcripts of fact, because they include or postulate these, and give a picture not only of the earth beneath our feet, but of the sky above us, of the hope and freshness of the morning, of the mystery and magic of the night. They draw the complete circle, instead of mistrustfully confining themselves to the lower arc.20

Notwithstanding the attractiveness of this artistic creed, the ranks of the out-and-out romancers have gradually thinned, as we have seen. Professor Boyesen believed that Bret Harte was the last of these. Slowly the realists, led by Howells and James, have gained ground, and for the last twenty years have almost steadily held the field. Of late, indeed, there have been some signs of a reaction; but it has as yet taken no very pronounced form.

A necessary concomitant of this tendency toward realism has been an increase in the number of “novels of the soil.” Writers have drawn what they knew best: Miss Woolson, the Lake region; Cable, Creole New Orleans; Ella Higginson and Emma Wolf, the Pacific coast; Allen, Kentucky; Miss Murfree, Tennessee; Fawcett and Bunner, New York; Henry B. Fuller and Miss Wyatt, Chicago; Miss Jewett and Mrs. Wilkins Freeman, New England. One reason why the “great American novel” has not yet been written is the very bigness of the country. No great personality has yet risen who can combine all the elements of our vast modern life into one harmonious structure. Meanwhile we have had most of the various sections of our country described in fiction by skilful hands. Types of a life that is passing away have been caught and preserved in a fiction which, though assuredly not immortal, is destined, we believe, to a long life.

Our critics have justly complained, however, of the limited range of our novelists. They are timid. They are content to paint a small canvas. They do not rise to great conceptions. They do not probe life to its depths; neither do they rise to the height of all its grandeur. This is, of course, only another way of saying that we have no supremely great novelists. But doubtless the mediocrity of our fiction is partly due to the disastrous effect of commercialism and professionalism on the novelist’s trade; though Mr. Whibley’s account of this (Blackwood’s, March, 1908) is exaggerated. Certainly our writers must be less eager for immediate and substantial rewards. Poeta nascitur, non fit; too many “made” writers are pouring out fiction to-day.

Our fiction possesses one characteristic which has often been commented upon—a general excellence of moral atmosphere. There is little American fiction that must be kept from the curious Young Person. Some critics allege that the obligation to write what anyone may be permitted to read has prevented American novelists from discussing those darker problems of sex-relations which confront us, and which should find expression in a literature adequately reflecting our intellectual and moral life; that missing any rigorous attack on these problems they find our fiction tame, insipid, wanting in vitality. But such an opinion carries with it its own condemnation. If our fiction lacks vitality, it is probably from other causes; at any rate Americans are generally content to leave matters of moral pathology to their moral surgeons, whose diagnoses and discussions are not expected to circulate promiscuously; and it is not likely that our novelists will consent to defile their pages for the sake of securing comprehensiveness in their pictures of life.

The short story has been brought by American writers to a high degree of perfection. Irving was its American father; and in the hands of Hawthorne, Poe, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edward Everett Hale, Miss Woolson, Brander Matthews, Miss Jewett, Stockton, Page, Mark Twain, Mrs. Freeman, and many others, it has become a highly flexible instrument, capable of subtle adaptations. The limitations of range and environment have made for great delicacy and precision in the minute portraits and the genres to be found in large numbers throughout our short stories.

Yet notwithstanding the increase in the number and the advance in quality of our short stories, the novel continues as popular as ever. The immense vogue of the novel in America has been commented upon many times. The “best sellers” are almost always novels; and so many novels of more than average excellence are produced every year that many really superior stories do not get the immediate hearing, at least, which they deserve. That this demand for novels will continue unabated for some time is altogether likely. That another form of literature will soon take its place is quite improbable.

Apparently we have no great living poets; for various reasons we have no dramatists of note; of novelists who are at least possibilities, we have several.

What will be the type of the American novel of the future? Probably it is rash to make any prediction; but one may venture to believe that the prevailing attitude of our future novelists will be that of a sane and optimistic realism. The morbid books like “The Jungle” do not wear well; and, while such books may have their use in promoting needed reforms, they do not constitute additions to literature and can, therefore, secure no permanent place. The pleasant paths of romance will always tempt bold and imaginative writers; but they will be more than ever restrained by the demand of enlightened readers that they shall not wander far from the probable, and shall present, clear and undistorted, the best there is in the actual present. That there are immense possibilities in the varied and complex life of to-day, few will doubt; that the great artists are to appear who will make the most of these opportunities we may assume with confidence.

III. THE POETS

English Influence on American Poetry.—If we accept the popular belief, and identify poets with makers of verse, it must be allowed that American poetry at its best—in the nineteenth century—is in a peculiar sense unoriginal and derivative. To be derivative, to have a traceable pedigree, may, indeed, be no disadvantage, either for a national or an individual genius. In their way, all modern literatures are derivative and unoriginal; not merely influenced by each other, but ultimately dependent for the sources of their inspiration upon the basal civilisations of Palestine and Greece. “We are all Greeks,” said Shelley. Milton might have said, “We are all Hebrews.” And our best American poets might have added, “We are all Englishmen.” Particular scenes on this continent, and the vast and ever growing extent of our territory, have both left their impress on our poets during the last five generations; they have touched the poetry of ten or twelve decades here and there with the undeniable stamp of reality, and given it now and then a largeness of range and freedom of atmosphere very proper to a nation whose sense of geography has been so elastic. Yet one can hardly say that our natural scenery has ever been really incarnate in our literature as a whole, or that a pervasive national spirit, a spirit at once large and precise, has entered fundamentally into our verse. What has been most effectual in our literature has been closely imitative, has followed at a little distance, yet step for step, the development of the English literature from which it sprang. This continuous imitation, now more superficial, now more indirect and elusive, has been the mainspring of our poetry even more than our prose, during the century just gone by.

American poetry, it is true, has probably been more plastic and mobile in its outer form than American prose, has been less steadily patterned after those literary standards in England which were bequeathed by the eighteenth century. The prose style of Irving betrays its descent from the essays of Addison; the style of Franklin was developed through conscious and painstaking emulation of the same models. Even fairly late in the eighteen hundreds, when perhaps only a trained ear can detect the lingering echoes of Pope and his school in our verse, the “Autocrat” of Wendell Holmes still retains an accent and a flavour from eighteenth-century, Ciceronian eloquence. No doubt the age of Pope and Johnson survived by many vestiges much longer in English prose than in English verse, for its habits of thought were more or less suited to argument and exposition in every time. Yet in the history of American letters it is easier to find parallels to Wordsworth and Shelley than to duplicate the prose rhapsodies—characteristic in nineteenth-century Europe—of De Quincey and Ruskin. To the transition in English literature that was marked by the appearance of “Lyrical Ballads” in 1798 our poetry was, in the main, more quickly responsive than our prose. None the less our prose, more conservative though it has been, less changeful in its manner of expression, has struck its roots far more deeply into our national being; and our verse, like the other fine arts, is still an exotic.

For our lack of a national art, a national poetry, a superficial reason is often assigned: in the conditions of a new country, in the struggle for existence, in the development of agriculture and commerce, in the assimilation of foreign races, there has been very little time for the nourishment of letters, very little of that leisure which the Greeks called scholé, and which is indispensable for a productive scholarship and for the flourishing of imagination. Yet we have had, or have taken, sufficient leisure to write and publish an immense amount of verse, judged merely by its bulk. Scarcely an American author can be mentioned in the nineteenth century that did not try his hand at metrical composition. The truth is, rather, that we have seldom approached the art of poetry with enough seriousness; that, having rebelled against the Puritan’s unkindly conception of life, we have nevertheless to some extent acquiesced in his belittling estimate of imaginative art; that we have failed to recognise in the poet a necessary servant of the commonwealth, a leader worthy of a high and severe training. Our versifiers have rushed into print before they were ripe, and they have praised each other’s work too easily; while the standards set by the public taste have been readily met when the rhymers succeeded in being “patriotic.” Real patriotism demands such an admission.

Not that our poets have been wholly without a philosophy of criticism; though it is significant that the most subtle and sympathetic understanding of the poetic temperament, of its function as well as its perils, is to be found, not in the writings of any maker of verses but in those of a novelist, Hawthorne—for example, in “The House of Seven Gables” and “The Great Stone Face.” Yet Bryant read, meditated, and wrote upon the art of poetry; Poe thought somewhat, if not deeply, upon it; Lanier made a worthy contribution to the science of meter; Longfellow was conversant with the literature of criticism; and Emerson’s stimulating essay on “The Poet,” while it may not have been the sort of medicine that our men of letters most needed, has doubtless exerted a wholesome influence. In Poe’s day, several magazines were discussing the principles of imaginative composition. However, an “Art of Poetry” like Timrod’s (published in The Atlantic Monthly for September, 1905) could lie for forty years in manuscript, without exciting any strong suspicion of its value; and in the long run there has been an amazing disproportion between the slender thread of fundamental tradition and sound critical theory on the one hand, and the swollen and rapid stream of naïve, uncultivated verse, gathering from every quarter, on the other. Whatever English poets furnished the models, the imitation was largely on the surface. First Pope and his successors in England, then Wordsworth and Coleridge, then Shelley and Keats, and Scott and Bryon, and subsequently Tennyson,—all had in turn their American devotees. But there seems to have been relatively little understanding like that of Bryant and Timrod for the conscious theory underlying the “experiments” in “Lyrical Ballads,” or for the ideal demands which Shelley laid upon poetry and poets; nor did cisatlantic readers of Lord Byron much concern themselves about that Longinus whom he studied “o’er a bottle,” or for the structural frame upon which was reared Tennyson’s “Palace of Art.”

Characteristics of the Period.—Of course in the following pages we shall deal as briefly as possible with those American poets in the last century who are touched to any great extent by strictures like these; for a history of literature is bound to treat as far as may be of writers that have made a wise use of tradition, and whose native insight has enabled them to train their genius in accordance with universal canons of art, and with a due appreciation of masterly technique. Meanwhile we may attempt to summarise the characteristics of the poetical era under consideration, and, in particular, of the earlier rather than the latter half of that era. The nearer we advance toward our own day, the wiser it is to refrain from general characterisation.