CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE (continued 2)
Reading edition
Ind. 74 (’13): 53.
New Repub. 7 (’16): 234.
Outlook, 102 (’12): 207 (portrait); 103 (’13): 262.
Poetry, 9 (’16): 90.
See also Book Review Digest, 1913-4, 1916-21.
Clayton (Meeker) Hamilton—critic, dramatist.
Born at Brooklyn, New York, 1881. A. B., Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1900; A. M., Columbia, 1901. Teacher of English and lecturer in various schools and colleges, 1901-17. Dramatic critic and associate editor of the Forum, 1907-09. Dramatic editor of The Bookman, 1910-18, and of other magazines. Has traveled widely.
Bibliography
Studies in Stage Craft. 1914.
The Big Idea. 1917. (With A. E. Thomas, q. v.)
Problems of the Playwright. 1917.
Seen on the Stage. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 27 (’08): 340 (portrait); 42 (’16): 523 (portrait); 46 (’17): 257 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1915, 1917.
Arthur Sherburne Hardy—novelist.
Born at Andover, Massachusetts, 1847. Graduate of U. S. Military Academy, 1869. Honorary higher degrees. Studied and taught civil engineering, 1874-78, and mathematics, 1878-93, at Dartmouth. Represented the United States in Persia and in various countries of Europe as minister, 1897-1905.
Bibliography
But Yet a Woman. 1883.
*Passe Rose. 1889.
Aurélie. 1912.
Diane and Her Friends. 1914.
Helen. 1916.
No. 13, Rue du Bon Diable. 1917.
Peter. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Bk. Buyer, 21 (’00): 96.
Nation, 99 (’14): 582.
R. of Rs. 27 (’03): 628 (portrait).
Frank Harris—man of letters.
Born in Galway, Ireland, 1854, but came to the United States in 1870. Naturalized. Educated at the universities of Kansas, Paris, Heidelberg, Strassburg, Göttingen, Berlin, Vienna, and Athens (no degrees). Admitted to the Kansas bar, 1875. Later, returned to Europe and became editor of the Evening News and Fortnightly Review and secured control of the Saturday Review.
Mr. Harris’s work belongs in a class by itself. It is valuable partly for its content, as in the case of his intimate portraits of famous men whom he has known, and partly for the force and brilliancy of the style.
Bibliography
Elder Conklin. 1892. (Novel.)
The Bomb—A Story of the Chicago Anarchists of 1886. 1909.
The Man Shakespeare. 1909.
Montes, the Matador. 1910. (Short stories.)
Shakespeare and his Love. 1910.
The Women of Shakespeare. 1911.
Gravitation. 1912.
Unpathed Waters. 1913.
The Veils of Isis and Other Stories. 1914.
*Contemporary Portraits. 1914.
Great Days. 1914. (Novel.)
Love in Youth. 1914.
England or Germany? 1915.
Oscar Wilde; His Life and Confessions. 1916.
*Contemporary Portraits. Second Series. 1919.
A Mad Love. 1920.
*Contemporary Portraits. Third Series. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 36 (’13): 498; 37 (’13): 592.
Bookm. (Lond.) 45 (’14): 226; 47 (’15): 160.
Cur. Op. 59 (’15): 196.
Eng. Rev. 9 (’11): 599.
Forum, 55 (’16): 189.
Lit. Digest, 46 (’13): 134 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Oct. 7, 1915: 341.
Nation, 101 (’10): 361.
New Repub. 29 (’21): 21. (Hackett.)
No. Am. 202 (’15): 915.
Sat. Rev. 90 (’00): 551.
Henry Sydnor Harrison—novelist.
Born at Sewanee, Tennessee, 1880. A. B., Columbia, 1900; A. M., 1913.
Suggestions for Reading
Read the article by Robert Herrick listed below, and compare Harrison’s work with that of Dickens, Sterne, and Meredith. Deal with each novelist separately according to the influences noted by Mr. Herrick.
Bibliography
Captivating Mary Carstairs. 1911. (Under the pseudonym, “Henry Second.”)
Queed. 1911.
V. V.’s Eyes. 1913.
Angela’s Business. 1915.
When I Come Back. 1919.
Saint Teresa. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 39 (’14): 420 (portrait).
Columbia Univ. Quar. 15 (’13): 341 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 58 (’15): 352 (portrait).
Ind. 71 (’11): 533 (portrait).
Lit. Digest, 48 (’14): 905 (portrait).
New Repub. 2 (’15): 199. (Herrick.)
World’s Work, 26 (’13): 221.
Ben Hecht—novelist, dramatist.
Born in New York City, 1893. Traveled much until he was eight years old, then lived in Racine, Wisconsin, and was educated in the Racine high school. Went to Chicago, intending to join the Thomas Orchestra as violinist, but instead, joined the staff of the Chicago Journal and later that of the Daily News. War correspondent in Germany.
Bibliography
The Hero of Santa Maria; a Ridiculous Tragedy in One Act. 1920. (With Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, q. v.)
The Wonder Hat; a Harlequinade in One Act. 1920. (With Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, q. v.)
Erik Dorn. 1921. (Novel.)
Also in: The Little Review. (Passim.)
Studies and Reviews
Cur. Op. 71 (’21): 644.
Dial, 71 (’21): 597.
Freeman, 4 (’21): 282.
See also Book Review Digest, 1921.
Joseph Hergesheimer—novelist.
Born at Philadelphia, 1880. Educated for a short time at a Quaker school in Philadelphia and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Note Mr. Hergesheimer’s use of setting and atmosphere. What is the relative importance of these to plot and character? Is the author’s main interest in developing a story, in creating characters that live, or in suggesting particular phases of life, each with its own physical and emotional atmosphere?
2. What evidences of originality do you find in his books?
3. Is the author a realist or a romanticist? Is it true, as has been said, that he stands midway between the “unrelieved realism” of the new school of writers and the “genteel moralism” of the old?
4. Consider these two criticisms of Mr. Hergesheimer’s work: (1) He aims to set down “relative truth ... the colors and scents and emotions of existence”; and (2) he is at times as much concerned “with the stuffs as with the stuff of life.”
5. Make a special study of his style: (1) of his use of suggestion; (2) of his choice of words; (3) of his feeling for rhythm. It is true that there is both art and artifice in his methods?
6. In what ways, if any, has he made actual contribution to American literature? Can you prophesy as to his future?
Bibliography
The Lay Anthony. 1914.
Mountain Blood. 1915.
The Three Black Pennys. 1917.
Gold and Iron. 1918. (Wild Oranges, Tubal Cain, The Dark Fleece.)
*Java Head. 1919.
The Happy End. 1919. (Play.)
*Linda Condon. 1919.
Hugh Walpole, an Appreciation. 1919.
San Cristóbal de la Habana. 1920.
Cytherea. 1922.
The Bright Shawl. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Ath. 1919, 2: 1339. (Conrad Aiken.)
Bookm. 50 (’19): 267. (James Branch Cabell.)
Bookm. (Lond.) 56 (’19): 65; 58 (’20): 193. (Portraits.)
Cur. Op. 66 (’19): 184; 68 (’20): 229; 71 (’21): 237. (Portraits.)
Dial, 66 (’19): 449.
Lond. Mercury, 1 (’20): 342.
Nation, 109 (’19): 404; 112 (’21): 741. (Carl Van Doren.)
Sat. Rev. 128 (’19): 343.
Spec. 125 (’20): 371.
See also Book Review Digest, 1919.
Robert Herrick—novelist.
Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1868. A. B., Harvard, 1890. Taught English at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1890-3, and at the University of Chicago since then, becoming professor, 1905. More important for interpretation of his work is the fact that he has carefully studied modern English and Continental literatures and is deeply interested in philosophy and the social sciences.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Much of Mr. Herrick’s work must be regarded as primarily social criticism of American life. Does the interest tend to centre rather upon the problems of the characters, growing out of their circumstances, or upon the characters themselves?
2. Is Mr. Herrick’s work more notable for scope and breadth or for intensity?
3. Note, especially in the novels previous to 1905, the conscientious artistry, the compactness of structure, and the unity of tone commonly associated with poetry. What other qualities characteristic of poetry appear in Mr. Herrick’s work?
4. With the structure of his earlier work compare that of the Memoirs of an American Citizen as showing an attempt at greater breadth of canvas and greater variety of tone. Trace this attempt further in his later work.
5. What evidences do you find in Mr. Herrick’s novels of a carefully wrought theory of the art of the novelist?
6. Someone has called Mr. Herrick “a discouraged idealist.” Is this just?
Bibliography
The Man Who Wins. 1895.
Literary Love Letters and Other Stories. 1896.
The Gospel of Freedom. 1898.
Love’s Dilemmas. 1898.
The Web of Life. 1900.
The Real World. 1901.
Their Child. 1903.
*The Common Lot. 1904.
The Memoirs of an American Citizen. 1905.
*The Master of the Inn. 1908.
*Together. 1908.
A Life for a Life. 1910.
The Healer. 1911.
One Woman’s Life. 1913.
His Great Adventure. 1913.
Clark’s Field. 1914.
The World Decision. 1916.
The Conscript Mother. 1916.
Studies and Reviews
Bjorkman, E. Voices of Tomorrow. 1913.
Cooper.
Acad. 75 (’08): 331.
Bookm. 20 (’04): 192 (portrait), 220; 28 (’08): 350 (portrait); 38 (’13): 274.
Critic, 44 (’04): 112 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 54 (’13): 317 (portrait).
Dial, 56 (’14): 5.
Lit. Digest, 44 (’12): 426 (portrait).
Nation, 113 (’21): 230.
No. Am. 189 (’09): 812. (Howells.)
Outlook, 78 (’04): 862, 864 (portrait).
Poet Lore, 19 (’08): 337.
R. of Rs. 42 (’10): 123 (portrait); 43 (’11): 380 (portrait); 49 (’14): 621.
Robert Cortes Holliday (“Murray Hill”)—essayist, critic.
Born at Indianapolis, 1880. Studied at the Art Students’ League, New York, 1899-1902, and at the University of; Kansas, 1903-4. Illustrator for magazines, 1904-5. Bookseller with Scribner’s, 1906-11. Librarian, 1912-3. Held various editorial positions with New York publishers, 1913-8. Associate editor of The Bookman, 1918, and editor, 1919—.
Bibliography
Booth Tarkington. 1918.
The Walking Stick Papers. 1918.
Joyce Kilmer, A Memoir. 1918.
Peeps at People. 1919.
Broome Street Straws. 1919.
Men and Books and Cities. 1920.
Turns about Town. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 47 (’18): 149 (portrait); 48 (’18): 478.
Dial, 64 (’18): 297; 65 (’18): 419.
See also Book Review Digest, 1918-21.
William Dean Howells—novelist, dramatist, critic, poet.
Born at Martins Ferry, Ohio, 1837. Of Welsh, English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Irish ancestry. His father was a country editor, and Mr. Howells, living as he did under pioneer conditions, had very little formal education, but educated himself in working on newspapers as printer, correspondent, and editor. He read continually in boyhood, and taught himself to read six languages. As the result of a campaign life of Lincoln, he was appointed U. S. consul at Venice and lived there, 1861-5. After a year on the staff of the Nation, he became assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1866-72, and editor, 1872-81. Later, he became an editorial writer for Harper’s Magazine, 1886-91, and finally writer of the “Editor’s Easy Chair,” for the same magazine.
Although Mr. Howells did not go to college, he received many honorary higher degrees, and was offered professorships by three Universities (including that which had been held by Longfellow and Lowell at Harvard); but he refused these, not considering himself fitted for such work. In his editorial capacity he gave much advice and help to authors who afterward became famous. He died in 1920.
Suggestions for Reading
1. For just appraisement of Mr. Howells, it is necessary to be familiar with the facts of his life, and with his theories of fiction. For his life the two autobiographical books Years of My Youth and My Literary Passions are most valuable. After reading these, it is possible to see the large use of autobiographical material in the novels.
2. It is interesting to group the books of Howells according to the sources of the material: (1) those growing out of his early life in Ohio; (2) those growing out of his life abroad; (3) those growing out of his life in Boston and New York. This last class might well be subdivided into those written before he came under the influence of Tolstoi and those written after. The turning-point is in A Hazard of New Fortunes. Does Mr. Howells’s interest in sociological problems add to or lessen the final value of his work?
3. The realism of Howells set a standard for American literature, the effect of which has not yet passed. Study his theories of fiction (Criticism and Fiction, and Literature and Life) and consider the good and bad effects of his work upon the development of the novel.
4. Use the following quotation from Van Wyck Brooks, on Howells’s “panoramic theory” of the novel as a test of his work:
To make a work of art, it is necessary to take a piece out of life and round it off; and, so long as the piece is perfectly rounded off and complete in itself, so long as the chosen group of characters are perfectly proportioned in relation to one another, there is no need to introduce an artificial chain of action.
5. Howells’s style has often been admired. Try to analyze it into its elements. Consider Mark Twain’s judgment:
For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great qualities—clearness, compression, verbal exactness and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing—he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing world.
6. Can you make any judgment now as to Howells’s future place in American literature?
Bibliography
Poems by Two Friends. 1860. (With John J. Piatt.)
Life of Abraham Lincoln. 1860.
Venetian Life. 1866.
Italian Journeys. 1867.
No Love Lost: A Romance of Travel. 1869. (Poems.)
Suburban Sketches. 1871.
Their Wedding Journey. 1871.
Poems. 1873.
A Chance Acquaintance. 1873.
A Foregone Conclusion. 1875.
The Parlor Car. 1876. (Farce.)
A Day’s Pleasure. 1876.
Out of the Question. 1877. (Comedy.)
A Counterfeit Presentment. 1877. (Comedy.)
*The Lady of the Aroostook. 1879.
The Undiscovered Country. 1880.
A Fearful Responsibility, and Other Stories. 1881.
A Day’s Pleasure, and Other Sketches. 1881.
Dr. Breen’s Practice. 1881.
*A Modern Instance. 1882.
The Sleeping-Car. 1883. (Farce.)
A Woman’s Reason. 1883.
Three Villages. 1884.
The Register. 1884. (Farce.)
*The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1884.
The Elevator. 1885. (Farce.)
Five O’Clock Tea. 1885. (Farce.)
Indian Summer. 1885.
The Garroters. 1886. (Farce.)
Tuscan Cities. 1886.
Poems. 1886.
The Minister’s Charge. 1887. (= The Apprenticeship of Lemuel Barker.)
Modern Italian Poets. 1887.
*April Hopes. 1888.
A Sea-Change or Love’s Stowaway. 1888. (Farce.)
Annie Kilburn. 1889.
*A Hazard of New Fortunes. 1889.
The Mouse Trap, and Other Farces. 1889.
The Shadow of a Dream. 1890.
A Boy’s Town. 1890. (Autobiographical.)
The Albany Depot. 1891. (Play.)
Criticism and Fiction. 1891.
An Imperative Duty. 1892.
*The Quality of Mercy. 1892.
A Letter of Introduction. 1892. (Farce.)
A Little Swiss Sojourn. 1892.
Christmas Every Day, and Other Stories for Children. 1893.
My Year in a Log Cabin. 1893. (Autobiographical.)
The Unexpected Guests. 1893. (Farce.)
The World of Chance. 1890.
Evening Dress. 1893. (Farce.)
The Coast of Bohemia. 1893.
A Likely Story, 1894. (Farce.)
A Traveler from Altruria. 1894. (Romance.)
My Literary Passions. 1895. (Autobiographical.)
Stops of Various Quills. 1895. (Poems.)
The Day of Their Wedding. 1896.
A Parting and a Meeting. 1896.
Impressions and Experiences. 1896.
Idyls in Drab. 1896.
The Landlord at Lion’s Head. 1897.
A Previous Engagement. 1897. (Comedy.)
An Open-Eyed Conspiracy. 1897.
Stories of Ohio. 1897.
The Story of a Play. 1898.
The Ragged Lady. 1899.
Their Silver Wedding Journey. 1899.
An Indian Giver. 1900. (Comedy.)
Room Forty-five. 1900. (Farce.)
The Smoking Car. 1900. (Farce.)
Bride Roses. A Scene. 1900.
Literary Friends and Acquaintances. 1900.
A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship. 1900.
Doorstep Acquaintance and Other Sketches. 1900.
A Pair of Patient Lovers. 1901. (5 stories.)
Poems. 1901.
Heroines of Fiction. 1901.
The Kentons. 1902.
Literature and Life. 1902.
The Flight of Pony Baker. A Boy’s Town Story. 1902.
Minor Dramas. 1902. (19 Farces.)
Letters Home. 1903.
Questionable Shapes. 1903. (3 stories.)
The Son of Royal Langbrith. 1904.
Miss Bellard’s Inspiration. 1905.
London Films. 1905.
Certain Delightful English Towns. 1906.
Between the Dark and the Daylight. 1907. (7 stories.)
Through the Eye of the Needle. 1907. (Romance.)
Mulberries in Pay’s Garden. 1907.
Roman Holidays and Others. 1908.
Fennel and Rue. 1908.
The Mother and the Father. Dramatic Passages. 1909.
Seven English Cities. 1909.
Imaginary Interviews. 1910.
My Mark Twain. 1910.
Parting Friends. 1911. (Farce.)
New Leaf Mills. 1913.
Familiar Spanish Travels. 1913.
The Seen and the Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon. A Fantasy. 1914.
Years of my Youth. 1916. (Autobiographical.)
Buying a Horse. 1916.
The Leatherwood God. 1916.
The Daughter of the Storage and Other Things in Prose and Verse. 1916.
The Vacation of the Kelwyns. 1920.
Mrs. Farrell. 1921.
For complete bibliography, see Cambridge, III (IV), 663.
Studies and Reviews
Boynton.
Cambridge, III, 77.
Clemens, S. L. What is Man? and Other Essays. 1917.
Follett.
Halsey.
Harkins.
Harvey, A. William Dean Howells. 1917.
Macy.
Phelps. (Modern Novelists.)
Robertson, J. M. Essays toward a Critical Method. 1889.
Underwood.
Van Doren, Carl.
Ath. 1920, 1: 634.
Atlan. 91 (’03): 77; 119 (’17): 362.
Bookm. 21 (’05): 566; 25 (’07): 2 (portrait), 67; 45 (’17): 1 (Hamlin Garland); 49 (’19): 549; 51 (’20): 385.
Bookm. (Lond.) 23 (’03): 214; 52 (’17): 88 (portrait).
Cath. World, 111 (’20): 445.
Cent. 100 (’20): 674 (portrait).
Critic, 38 (’01): 165.
Cur. Lit. 52 (’12): 461.
Cur. Op. 54 (’13): 411; 60 (’16): 352 (portrait); 62 (’17): 278, 357 (portrait); 63 (’17): 270; 69 (’20): 93 (portrait).
Fortn. 115 (’21): 154.
Forum, 32 (’02): 629; 49 (’13): 217.
Harp. 113 (’06): 221 (Mark Twain)=Cur. Lit. 41 (’06): 48 (condensed); 134 (’17): 903; 141 (’20): 265 (portrait), 346.
Harp. W. 46 (’02): 929 (portrait), 947; 56 (’12): Mar. 9, pp. 5, 27 (portrait).
Ind. 72 (’12): 533 (portrait).
J. Educ. 65 (’07): 311.
Lit. Digest, 44 (’12): 485; 65 (’20): My. 29, p. 34, Je. 12, p. 53 (portrait), Je. 19, pp. 37, 56.
Liv. Age, 294 (’17): 173; 306 (’20): 98; 308 (’21): 304; 312 (’21): 304.
Lond. Mer., 2 (’20): 133.
Lond. Times, Dec. 7, 1916: 585.
Nation, 31 (’80): 49 (W. C. Brownell); 104 (’17): 261; 110 (’20): 673.
New Repub. 10 (’17): supp. p. 3; 22 (’20): 393; 26 (’21): 192.
New Statesman, 15 (’20): 195.
No. Am. 176 (’03): 336; 195 (’12): 432 (portrait), 550; 196 (’12): 339; 212 (’20): 1 (portrait), 17.
Outlook, 69 (’01): 712 (portrait); 111 (’15): 786, 798 (portrait); 129 (’21): 187 (portrait).
R. of Rs. 61 (’20): 562 (portrait), 644.
Sat. Rev. 91 (’01): 806.
Spec. 98 (’07): 450; 117 (’16): 834.
Westm. R. 178 (’12): 597.
World’s Work, 18 (’09): 11547. (Van Wyck Brooks.)
Yale Rev. n. s. 10 (’20): 99.
Cf. also Cambridge, III (IV), 665.
James Gibbons Huneker—critic.
Born at Philadelphia, 1860. Graduate of Roth’s Military Academy, Philadelphia, 1873. Studied law five years at the Law Academy, Philadelphia. Studied piano in Paris and was for ten years associated with Rafael Joseffy, as teacher of piano at the National Conservatory, New York. Musical and dramatic critic of the New York Recorder, 1891-5; of the Morning Advertiser, 1895-7; also musical, dramatic, and art critic of the New York Sun. Died in 1921.
For an understanding of Mr. Huneker’s criticisms, it is well to begin with his autobiography (Steeplejack).
Bibliography
Mezzotints in Modern Music. 1899.
Melomaniacs. 1902.
Overtones. 1904.
Iconoclasts—A Book of Dramatists. 1905.
Visionaries. 1905.
Egoists—A Book of Supermen. 1909.
Promenades of an Impressionist. 1910.
The Pathos of Distance. 1913.
Ivory Apes and Peacocks. 1915.
New Cosmopolis. 1915.
Unicorns. 1917.
Steeplejack. 1919.
Painted Veils. 1920.
Bedouins. 1920.
Variations. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Mencken, H. L. Prefaces.
Bookm. 11 (’00): 501 (portrait); 21 (’05): 79 (portrait), 564, 565 (portrait); 29 (’09): 236 (portrait); 31 (’14): 241 (portrait); 37 (’13): 598 (portrait); 41 (’15): 246 (portrait); 53 (’21): 124.
Cent. 102 (’21): 191.
Critic, 36 (’00): 487 (portrait).
Cur. Lit. 39 (’05): 75 (portrait); 42 (’07): 167; 47 (’09): 57 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 65 (’18): 392; 70 (’21): 534. (Portraits.)
Forum, 41 (’09): 600.
Lit. Digest, 68 (’21): Mar. 5, p. 28 (portrait).
Liv. Age, 309 (’21): 426.
New Repub. 25 (’21): 357.
No. Am. 213 (’21): 556.
Outlook, 126 (’20): 469 (portrait); 127 (’21): 286.
Sat. Rev. 97 (’04): 551.
Spec. 115 (’15): 879.
Fannie Hurst (Missouri, 1889)—short-story writer, novelist.
Has studied especially the lives of working girls. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Wallace Irwin (New York, 1875)—short-story writer.
Most characteristic material life in California and the Japanese there. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Henry James—novelist.
Born in New York City, 1843. Younger brother of William James, the psychologist. Educated largely in France and Switzerland. Studied at the Harvard Law School. After 1869, lived for the most part abroad, chiefly in England. Spent much time at Lamb House, Rye, a beautiful eighteenth century English house which he purchased in order to live in retirement. Just before his death, to show his sympathy for the part played by England in the War and his criticism of what he considered our backwardness, he became naturalized as a British citizen. In 1916, received the Order of Merit (O. M.), the highest honor for literary men conferred in England. His death in 1916 was attributed to overstrain caused by the War and his efforts to help the sufferers.
Suggestions for Reading
1. A good approach to the work of Henry James is through the three articles from the Quarterly Review listed below. Mr. Fullerton sums up the material scattered through the prefaces to the definitive edition of 1909. Mr. Percy Lubbock writes as the editor of the Letters. Mrs. Wharton adds to criticism of the Letters illuminating personal reminiscences.
2. One of the important Prefaces on James’s theory of the novel and his method of work is that to the Portrait of a Lady, from which the extract below is taken. In speaking of Turgenev’s attitude toward his characters, James says:
He saw them, in that fashion, as disponible, saw them subject to the chances, the complications of existence, and saw them vividly but then had to find for them the right relations, those that would most bring them out; to imagine, to invent and select and piece together the situations most useful and favourable to the sense of the creatures themselves, the complications they would be most likely to produce and to feel.
“To arrive at these things is to arrive at my ‘story,’ he said, “and that’s the way I look for it. The result is that I’m often accused of not having ‘story’ enough....”
So this beautiful genius, and I recall with comfort the gratitude I drew from his reference to the intensity of suggestion that may reside in the stray figure, the unattached character, the image en disponible. It gave me higher warrant than I seemed then to have met for just that blest habit of one’s own imagination, the trick of investing some conceived or encountered individual, some brace or group of individuals, with the germinal property and authority. I was myself so much more antecedently conscious of my figures than of their setting—a too preliminary, a preferential interest in which struck me as in general such a putting of the cart before the horse. I might envy, though I couldn’t emulate, the imaginative writer so constituted as to see his fable first and to make out his agents afterwards: I could think so little of any situation that didn’t depend for its interest on the nature of the persons situated, and thereby on their way of taking it....
The question comes back thus, obviously, to the kind and the degree of the artist’s prime sensibility, which is the soil out of which his subject springs. The quality and capacity of that soil, its ability to “grow” with due freshness and straightness any vision of life, represents, strongly or weakly, the projected morality. That element is but another name for the more or less close connexion of the subject with some mark made on the intelligence, with some sincere experience.
On one thing I was determined; that, though I should clearly have to pile brick upon brick for the creation of an interest, I would leave no pretext for saying that anything is out of line, scale or perspective. I would build large—in fine embossed vaults and painted arches, as who should say, and yet never let it appear that the chequered pavement, the ground under the reader’s feet, fails to stretch at every point to the base of the walls....
The bricks, for the whole counting-over—putting for bricks little touches and inventions and enhancements by the way—affect me in truth as well-nigh innumerable and as ever so scrupulously fitted together and packed-in. It is an effect of detail, of the minutest; though, if one were in this connexion to say all, one would express the hope that the general, the ampler part of the modest monument still survives....
So early was to begin my tendency to overtreat, rather than undertreat (when there was choice or danger) my subject. (Many members of my craft, I gather, are far from agreeing with me, but I have always held overtreating the minor disservice.) ... There was the danger of the noted “thinness”—which was to be averted, tooth and nail, by cultivation of the lively.... And then there was another matter. I had, within the few preceding years, come to live in London, and the “international” light lay, in those days, to my sense, thick and rich upon the scene. It was the light in which so much of the picture hung. But that is another matter. There is really too much to say.
3. Remember the following clues in reading James’s, work: “His one preoccupation was the criticism, for his own purpose, of the art of life.” The emphasis is on the word art. His purpose is suggested by his own claim to have “that tender appreciation of actuality which makes even the application of a single coat of rose-color seem an act of violence.”
4. There is suggestion of Mr. James’s limitations in the facts that he was tone deaf and so could not appreciate music, and that he is said not to have written a line of verse, and also in the fact that although his method of presentation in the novels is dramatic throughout and he strongly desired to write plays, the eight plays that he wrote (three of which were presented) were failures.
5. Mr. James’s place in the sequence of great European novelists is as a follower of Balzac, Flaubert, De Maupassant, and Turgenev, and as a predecessor of Conrad (whose study of him listed below should be read).
6. Early in the nineties, a great change in method came about in James’s work (cf. Cambridge, III, 98, 103). Judge separately typical books written before this change and others written after; then read several books of the period of change and decide what happened and whether or not it enhanced the value of his work.
7. One of the remarkable facts about James’s style is its influence upon the critics who write about him. A close analysis of its qualities—sentence length, the order and placing of the parts of the sentence, punctuation, vocabulary, etc., might bring a more definite understanding of the reasons for this influence.
8. A comparison of the work and qualities of Henry and William James might be made a valuable contribution to criticism.
9. For a student familiar with Europe, a study of the reasons for James’s affinity with Europe and dislike for American life would make an interesting study.
10. What different types of reasons can you bring to show that Henry James is likely to be a permanent force in American literature?
Bibliography
A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. 1875.
Transatlantic Sketches. 1875.
Roderick Hudson. 1876.
*The American. 1877.
Watch and Ward. 1878.
French Poets and Novelists. 1878.
The Europeans. A Sketch. 1878.
*Daisy Miller. A Study. 1879.
An International Episode. 1879.
Daisy Miller: A Study. An International Episode. Four Meetings. 1879.
The Madonna of the Future and Other Tales. 1879.
Hawthorne. 1879. (English Men of Letters.)
The Diary of a Man of Fifty and A Bundle of Letters. 1880.
Confidence. 1880.
Washington Square. 1881.
Washington Square. The Pension Beaurepas. A Bundle of Letters. 1881.
*The Portrait of a Lady. 1881.
Daisy Miller: A Comedy. 1882. (Privately printed.)
The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View. 1883.
Portraits of Places. 1883.
Tales of Three Cities. 1884.
A Little Tour in France. 1885.
Stories Revived. 1885. (3 vols. of Short Stories.)
The Bostonians. 1886.
The Princess Casamassima. 1886.
The Reverberator. 1888.
The Aspern Papers. Louisa Pallant. The Modern Warning. 1888.
Partial Portraits. 1888.
A London Life. The Patagonia. The Liar. Mrs. Temperley. 1889.
The Tragic Muse. 1892.
The Lesson of the Master. The Marriages. The Pupil. Brooksmith. The Solution. Sir Edward Orme. 1892.
The Real Thing and Other Tales. 1893.
The Private Life. Lord Beaupré. The Visits. 1893.
The Wheel of Time. Collaboration. Owen Wingrave. 1893.
Picture and Text. 1893.
Essays in London and Elsewhere. 1893.
Theatricals. Two Comedies: Tenants. Disengaged. 1894.
Theatricals. Second Series. The Album. The Reprobate. 1895.
*Terminations. The Death of the Lion. The Coxon Fund. The Middle Years. The Altar of the Dead. 1895.
Embarrassments. The Figure in the Carpet. Glasses. The Next Time. The Way It Came. 1896.
The Other House. 1896.
*The Spoils of Poynton. 1897.
*What Maisie Knew. 1897.
In the Cage. 1898.
The Two Magics. The Turn of the Screw. Covering End. 1898.
The Awkward Age. 1899.
The Soft Side. 1900.
The Sacred Fount. 1901.
*The Wings of the Dove. 1902.
The Better Sort. 1903. (Short stories.)
*The Ambassadors. 1903.
William Wetmore Story and His Friends. 1903.
*The Golden Bowl. 1904.
English Hours. 1905.
The Question of Our Speech. The Lesson of Balzac: Two Lectures. 1905.
The American Scene. 1907.
Views and Reviews, Now First Collected. 1908.
Italian Hours. 1909.
*The Altar of the Dead. The Beast in the Jungle. The Birthplace, and Other Tales. 1909.
The Finer Grain. 1910. (Short stories.)
The Outcry. 1911.
A Small Boy and Others. 1913. (Autobiography.)
Notes of a Son and Brother. 1914. (Autobiography.)
Notes on Novelists. With Some Other Notes. 1914.
The Ivory Tower. 1917.
The Sense of the Past. 1917.
The Middle Years. 1917. (Autobiography.)
Gabrielle de Bergerac. 1918. (Atlantic, 1860.)
Travelling Companions. 1919. (7 stories originally published 1868-74.)
A Landscape Painter. 1919. (4 stories originally published 1866-68.)
Master Eustace. 1920. (5 stories originally published 1869-78.)
The Letters of Henry James. 1920. (Selected and edited by Percy Lubbock.)
For further bibliographical references, see Cambridge, III (IV), 671.
Studies and Reviews
Beach, J. W. The Method of Henry James. 1918.
Brownell.
Cambridge.
Cary, Elizabeth Luther. The Novels of Henry James. 1905.
Elton, Oliver. Modern Studies. 1907.
Follett.
Freeman, John. The Moderns. 1917.
Hacket, Francis. Horizons. 1918.
Harkins.
Hueffer, Ford Madox. Henry James: a Critical Study. 1913.
Macy.
Perry, Bliss. The American Spirit in Literature. 1918.
Phelps.
Sherman, Stuart P. On Contemporary Literature. 1917.
Underwood.
Van Doren, Carl.
West, Rebecca. Henry James. 1916.
Acad. 75 (’08): 609; 86 (’14): 359; 87 (’14): 509; 89 (’15): 67.
Ath. 1919, 1: 518.
Atlan. 95 (’05): 496; 100 (’07): 458; 117 (’16): 801.
Bookm. 15 (’02): 396; 21 (’05): 23 (portrait), 71, 464; 26 (’07): 357; 30 (’09): 138 (portrait); 36 (’12): 176; 37 (’13): 595; 43 (’16): 219; 51 (’20): 364, 389.
Bookm. (Lond.) 43 (’13): 299 (portraits); 45 (’14): 302; 53 (’17): 107; 53 (’18): 163.
Contemp. 101 (’12): 69=Liv. Age, 272 (’12): 287.
Critic, 42 (’03): 31, 107 (portrait), 204, 393 (portrait); 44 (’04): 146; 46 (’05): 98 (portrait), 146.
Cur. Lit. 27 (’00): 21; 29 (’00): 148.
Cur. Op. 54 (’13): 489 (portrait); 56 (’14): 457; 60 (’16): 280 (portrait); 63 (’17): 118, 247, 407 (portrait).
Dial, 44 (’08): 174; 54 (’13): 372; 60 (’16): 259, 313, 316; 63 (’17): 260.
Egoist, 5 (’18): 1 (T. S. Eliot), 2 (Ezra Pound), 3, 4.
Eng. R. 22 (’16): 317.
Fortn. 105 (’16): 620=Liv. Age, 290 (’16): 281; 107 (’17): 995=Liv. Age, 294 (’17): 346=Bookm, 45 (’18): 571; 113 (’20): 864.
Forum, 55 (’16): 551.
Harp. W. 47 (’03): 273, 532, 552 (portrait); 48 (’04): 1375 (portrait), 1548 (portrait); 57 (’13): May 3, p. 18 (portrait); 62 (’16): March 25: 291. (Canby.)
Lamp, 28 (’04): 47. (Herbert Croly.)
Little Review, 5 (’18): August number.
Liv. Age, 236 (’03): 577; 240 (’04): 1; 262 (’09): 691; 289 (’16): 122, 229, 568; 306 (’20): 55; 310 (’21): 267.
Lond. Merc. 1 (’20): 673; 2 (’20): 29. (Edmund Gosse.)
Lond. Times, Apr. 10, 1913: 150; Mar. 9, 1916: 109; Oct. 19, 1917: 497; Dec. 27, 1918: 655; Mar. 28, 1919: 163.
Nation, 85 (’07): 343; 102 (’16): 244; 104 (’17): 393; 110 (’20): 690; 111 (’20): 441.
New Repub. 6 (’16): 152, 191; 7 (’16): 171; 13 (’17): 119, 254; 16 (’18): 172; 20 (’19): 113; 23 (’20): 63.
New Statesman, 6 (’16): 518; 9 (’17): 375; 15 (’20): 162.
19th Cent. 80 (’16): 141=Liv. Age, 290 (’16): 505.
No. Am. 176 (’03): 125; 180 (’05): 102 (Joseph Conrad); 185 (’07): 214; 203 (’16): 572 (Howells), 585 (Conrad), 592; 207 (’18): 130; 211 (’20): 682; 213 (’21): 211.
Outlook, 79 (’05): 838; 125 (’20): 167. (Portraits.)
Quar. 212 (’10): 393=Liv. Age, 265 (’10): 643; 226 (’16): 60=Liv. Age, 290 (’16): 733; 234 (’20): 188.
Sat. Rev. 95 (’03): 79; 107 (’09): 266; 121 (’16): 226; 123 (’17): 201; 129 (’20): 537.
Scrib. M. 36 (’04): 394; 67 (’20): 422, 548; 68 (’20): 89.
Sewanee Rev. 27 (’19): 1.
Spec. 98 (’07): 334; 116 (’16): 312.
Yale R. n. s. 5 (’16): 783; n. s. 10 (’20): 143.
Cf. also Cambridge, III (IV), 674.
Orrick Johns—poet.
Born at St. Louis, Missouri, 1887. Trained as an advertising copy writer. Won the prize of the Lyric Year, 1912, for his Second Avenue.
Bibliography
Asphalt and Other Poems. 1917.
Black Branches. 1920.
Also in: Others, 1916, 1917, 1919.
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Dial, 62 (’17): 476.
Poetry, 11 (’17): 44; 16 (’20): 162.
Bookm. 46 (’18): 578.
Owen McMahon Johnson (New York City, 1878)—novelist short-story writer.
Best known for studies in college life and in the psychology of the young woman (The Salamander, 1913). For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Robert Underwood Johnson—poet.
Born at Washington, D. C., 1853. B. S., Earlham College, 1871. Has many honorary higher degrees and decorations. Joined the staff of the Century, 1873; associate editor, 1881-1909; editor, 1909-13. Father of Owen McMahon Johnson (q. v.).
Ambassador to Italy, 1920-1.
For Mr. Johnson’s many activities outside his work as poet and as editor, see Who’s Who in America.
Bibliography
Collected Poems. 1919.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 47 (’18): 547. (Phelps.)
Critic, 42 (’03): 231 (portrait).
Lit. Digest, 64 (’20): Mar. 6, p. 32 (portrait).
R. of Rs. 49 (’14): 759 (portrait).
Mary Johnston (Virginia, 1870)—novelist.
Historical material, especially colonial Virginia. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Charles Rann Kennedy—dramatist.
Born at Derby, England, 1871. Largely self-educated. Office boy and clerk, thirteen to sixteen. Lecturer and writer to twenty-six. Actor, press-agent, and miscellaneous writer and theatrical business manager to thirty-four. His play, The Servant in the House, established his reputation.
Bibliography
*The Servant in the House. 1908.
The Winterfeast. 1908.
The Terrible Meek. 1911.
The Necessary Evil. 1913.
The Idol-Breaker. 1914.
The Rib of the Man. 1917.
The Army With Banners; A Divine Comedy of this Very Day. 1917.
The Fool from the Hills. 1919.
Studies and Reviews
Boynton.
Arena, 40 (’08): 18 (portrait), 20.
Atlan. 103 (’09): 73.
Dial, 45 (’08): 36.
Ind. 72 (’12): 725.
R. of Rs. 37 (’08): 757; 45 (’12): 633; 49 (’14): 501. (Portraits.)
(Alfred) Joyce Kilmer—poet, essayist.
Born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1886. Of mixed ancestry, Irish, German, English, Scotch. A. B., Rutgers, 1904; Columbia, 1906. Married Miss Aline Murray, step-daughter of Henry Mills Alden, editor of Harper’s Magazine (cf. Aline Kilmer). Taught a short time, then held various editorial positions on The Churchman, the Literary Digest, Current Literature, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, among others. In 1913, he and his wife were converted to Catholicism. In 1916, he was called to the faculty of the School of Journalism, New York University, succeeding Arthur Guiterman (q. v.). Enlisted as a private in the War and was killed in action, 1918.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Kilmer wished to be judged by poetry written after October, 1913, and to discard all earlier work. Why?
2. The following influences are traceable in his poetry: (1) Francis Thompson, Coventry Patmore, and earlier Catholic poets; (2) his mother’s musical talent; (3) his journalistic work; (4) the War.
3. Kilmer’s letters illustrate and explain the qualities of his work.
Bibliography
Trees and Other Poems. 1915.
Main Street and Other Poems. 1917.
Joyce Kilmer, edited by Robert Cortes Holliday. 1918. (Poems, essays, and letters.)
Circus, and Other Essays and Fugitive Pieces. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Holliday, R. C. Memoir in Joyce Kilmer (listed in bibliography).
Kilmer, Mrs. Annie Kilburn. Memories of my Son, Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, 1920.
Ath. 1919, 2: 1220.
Bookm. 48 (’18): 133 (portrait).
Bookm. (Lond.) 56 (’19): 122; 57 (’19): 118.
Cath. World, 100 (’14): 301; 108 (’18): 224.
Lit. Digest, 58 (’18): Aug. 31, p. 36 (portrait); Sept. 7, pp. 32 (portrait), 42.
Outlook, 120 (’18): 12, 16; 122 (’19): 467.
Poetry, 11 (’18): 281; 13 (’18): 31. 149.
R. of Rs. 58 (’18): 431 (portrait).
Aline Murray Kilmer—poet.
Step-daughter of Henry Mills Alden. Married in 1909 to Joyce Kilmer (q. v.).
Bibliography
Candles that Burn. 1919.
Vigils. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 54 (’21): 384.
Nation, 109 (’19): 116.
New Repub. 29 (’21): 133.
See also Book Review Digest, 1919, 1921.
Grace Elizabeth King—novelist.
Born at New Orleans, 1852, and educated there and in France. Her stories and novels furnish material for an interesting comparison with the work of G. W. Cable (q. v.). Her writing grew out of the desire to present from the inside the Creole Society in which she had grown up, to which she felt that Mr. Cable, as an outsider, had not done justice.
Bibliography
Monsieur Motte. 1888.
Balcony Stories. 1893.
The Pleasant Ways of St. Médard. 1916.
For reviews, see Pattee; also Book Review Digest, 1916.
Harry Herbert Knibbs (Ontario, Canada, 1874)—poet.
His material is cowboy life. For bibliography see Who’s Who in America.
Alfred Kreymborg—poet.
Born in New York City, 1883, of Danish ancestry. Educated at the Morris High School. A chess prodigy at the age of ten, and supported himself from seventeen to twenty-five by teaching chess and playing matches. Had several years of experience as bookkeeper.
In 1914, founded and edited The Glebe, which issued the first anthology of free verse. In 1916, 1917, 1919, published Others—three anthologies of radical poets. In 1921, went to Rome to edit, in association with Harold Loeb, an international magazine of the arts called The Broom (cf. Dial 70 [’21]: 606), but shortly after resigned.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Mr. Kreymborg is a rebel against all conventions of form and content in poetry. Consequently, the one thing to be expected in his work is the unexpected. How far his utterances are sincere and how far posed, each reader must judge for himself.
2. The following quotation from Poetry (9 [’16]: 51) may serve as a starting-point in discussing Mr. Kreymborg’s qualities: “An insinuating, meddlesome, quizzical, inquiring spirit; sometimes a clown, oftener a wit, now and then a lyric poet ... trips about cheerfully among life’s little incongruities; laughs at you and me and progress and prejudice and dreams; says ‘I told you so!’ with an air, as if after a double somersault in the circus ring; grows wistful, even tender, with emotions always genuine ... always ... as becomes the harlequin-philosopher, entertaining.”
3. The new movements in art—Futurist, Cubist, Vorticist—should be remembered in studying Mr. Kreymborg’s verse.
4. What is to be said of his economy in words?
Bibliography
Love and Life and Other Studies. 1908.
Apostrophes. 1910.
Erna Vitek. 1914. (Novel.)
Mushrooms; A Book of Free Forms. 1916.
Others, An Anthology of New Verse. 1916, 1917, 1919.
Plays for Poem-Mimes. 1918.
Blood of Things. 1920.
Plays for Merry Andrews. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Ath. 1919, 2: 1003. (Conrad Aiken.)
Chapbook, 1-2, May, 1920: 30.
Dial, 66 (’19): 29. (Lola Ridge.)
Poetry, 9 (’16): 51; 11 (’18): 201; 13 (’19): 224; 17 (’20): 153.
See also Book Review Digest, 1916, 1920.
Peter Bernard Kyne (San Francisco, 1860)—novelist.
The inventor of Cappy Ricks in stories of business life in California. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Stephen Butler Leacock—humorist.
Born in Hampshire, England, 1869. B. A., Toronto University; Ph. D., University of Chicago. Honorary higher degrees. Head of the department of economics, McGill University.
Bibliography
Literary Lapses. 1910.
Nonsense Novels. 1911.
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. 1912.
Behind the Beyond. 1913.
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich. 1914.
Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy. 1915.
Essays and Literary Studies. 1916.
Further Foolishness. 1916.
Frenzied Fiction. 1917.
The Hohenzollerns in America. 1919.
The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice. 1920. (Sociological discussion.)
Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels. 1920.
For study, see Bookm. (Lond.) 51 (’16): 39; also Book Review Digest, 1914-7, 1919, 1920.
Jennette (Barbour Perry) Lee (Mrs. Gerald Stanley Lee)—novelist.
Born at Bristol, Connecticut, 1860. A. B., Smith, 1886. Taught English at Vassar, 1890-3; at Western Reserve, 1893-6; instructor and professor of English at Smith, 1901-13.
Bibliography
The Son of a Fiddler. 1902.
*Uncle William. 1906.
Happy Island. 1910.
Mr. Achilles. 1912.
The Taste of Apples. 1913.
Aunt Jane. 1915.
The Green Jacket. 1917.
The Air-Man and the Tramp. 1918.
The Rain-Coat Girl. 1919.
The Chinese Coat. 1920.
The Other Susan. 1921.
Uncle Bijah’s Ghost. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Bk. Buyer, 22 (’01): 99 (portrait).
Bookm. 36 (’12): 347 (portrait); 38 (’13): 233, 236 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1913, 1915-8.
Edwin Lefevre (Colombia, South America, 1871)—novelist, short-story writer.
Uses Wall Street as material. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Sinclair Lewis—novelist.
Born at Sauk Center, Minnesota, 1885. Son of a physician. A. B., Yale, 1907. During the next ten years was a newspaper man in Connecticut, Iowa, and California, a magazine editor in Washington, D. C., and editor for New York book publishers. During the last five years has been traveling in the United States, living from one day to six months in the most diverse places, and motoring from end to end of twenty-six states. While supporting himself by short stories and experimental novels, he laid the foundation for his unusually successful Main Street. His first book, Our Mr. Wrenn, is said to contain a good deal of autobiography.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Do you recognize Gopher Prairie as a type? Is Mr. Lewis’s picture photography, caricature, or the kind of portraiture that is art? Or to what degree do you find all these elements?
2. Is the main interest of the book in the story? in the characterization? in the satire? or in an element of propaganda?
3. What is to be said of the constructive theory of living proposed by the heroine? Is it better or worse than the standard that prevailed before she went to Gopher Prairie to live?
4. Explain the success of the book. What, if any, elements of permanent value do you find? What conspicuous defects?
Bibliography
Our Mr. Wrenn. 1914.
The Trail of the Hawk. 1915.
The Job. 1917.
The Innocents. 1917.
Free Air. 1919.
*Main Street. 1920.
Babbitt. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Am. M. 91 (’21): Apr., p. 16 (portrait). Bookm. 39 (’14): 242, 248 (portrait); 54 (’21): 9. (Archibald Marshall.) Freeman, 2 (’20): 237. Lit. Digest, 68 (’21): Feb. 12, p. 28 (portrait). New Repub. 25 (’20): 20. Sat. Rev. 132 (’21): 230. See also Book Review Digest, 1920.
Ludwig Lewisohn—critic.
Born at Berlin, Germany. 1882. Brought to America, 1890. A. B., and A. M., College of Charleston, 1901 (Litt. D., 1914); A. M., Columbia, 1903. Editorial work and writing for magazines, 1904-10. Translator from the German. College instructor and professor, 1910-19. Dramatic editor of The Nation, 1919—.
Bibliography
The Modern Drama. 1915.
A Modern Book of Criticism. 1919.
Up Stream, an American Chronicle. 1922.
The Drama and the Stage. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 48 (’19): 558.
Nation 111 (’20): 219.
Sewanee R. 17 (’09): 458.
See also Book Review Digest, 1915, 1920.
Joseph Crosby Lincoln (Massachusetts, 1870)—novelist.
Writes of New England types, especially sailors. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
(Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay—poet.
Born at Springfield, Illinois, 1879. Educated in the public schools. Studied at Hiram College, Ohio, 1897-1900; at the Art Institute, Chicago, 1900-3, and at the New York School of Art, 1904-5. Member of the Christian (Disciples) Church. Y. M. C. A. lecturer, 1905-09. Lecturer for the Anti-Saloon League throughout central Illinois, 1909-10. Makes long pilgrimages on foot (cf. A Handy Guide for Beggars).
In the summer of 1912, he walked from Illinois to New Mexico, distributing his poems and speaking in behalf of “The Gospel of Beauty.”
Suggestions for Reading
1. Read for background A Handy Guide for Beggars and Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty.
2. An important clue to Mr. Lindsay’s work is suggested in his own note on reading his poems. Referring to the Greek lyrics as the type which survives in American vaudeville where every line may be two-thirds spoken and one-third sung, he adds: “I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek presentation of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader.... Big general contrasts between the main sections should be the rule of the first attempts at improvising. It is the hope of the writer that after two or three readings each line will suggest its own separate touch of melody to the reader who has become accustomed to the cadences. Let him read what he likes read, and sing what he likes sung.”
In carrying out this suggestion, note that Mr. Lindsay often prints aids to expression by means of italics, capitals, spaces, and even side notes and other notes on expression.
3. What different kinds of material appeal especially to Mr. Lindsay’s imagination? How do you explain his choice, and his limitations?
4. What effect upon his poetry has the missionary spirit which is so strong in him? Is his poetry more valuable for its singing element or for its ethical appeal? Do you discover any special originality?
5. How does his use of local material compare with that of Masters? of Frost? of Sandburg?
6. Study his rhythmic sense in different poems, the verse forms that he uses, the tendencies in rhyme, his use of refrain, of onomatop[oe]ia, of catalogues, etc.
7. Does Mr. Lindsay offend your poetic taste? If so, can you justify his use of the material you object to?
8. Do you judge that Mr. Lindsay is likely to write much greater poetry than he has hitherto produced?
9. Mr. Lindsay’s drawings are worth study for comparison with his poems.
10. Compare Mr. Lindsay’s development of the idea of the “poem game” with the “poem dance” of Bliss Carman (q. v.).
11. Consider Mr. Lindsay as the “poet of democracy.” What is he likely to do for the people? for poetry?
Bibliography
General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and Other Poems. 1913.
Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. 1914. (Prose.)
The Congo and Other Poems. 1914.
The Art of the Moving Picture. 1913. (Prose.)
A Handy Guide for Beggars. 1916. (Prose.)
The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems. 1917.
The Daniel Jazz and Other Poems. 1920.
The Golden Book of Springfield. 1920. (Prose.)
The Golden Whales of California. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Boynton.
Untermeyer.
Am. M. 74 (’12): 422 (portrait).
Ath. 1919, 2: 1334.
Bookm. 46 (’18): 575; 47 (’18): 125 (Phelps); 53 (’21): 525 (Morley).
Bookm. (Lond.) 57 (’20): 178.
Cent. 102 (’21): 638.
Chapbook, 1-2, May, 1920: 19.
Collier’s, 51 (’13): 7 (portrait).
Cur. Lit. 50 (’11): 320.
Cur. Op. 68 (’20): 851; 69 (’20): 371 (portrait).
Dial, 57 (’14): 281.
Ind. 77 (’14): 72.
Lit. Digest, 65 (’20): 43.
Liv. Age, 307 (’20): 671.
Lond. Merc. 2 (’20): 645; 3 (’20): 112.
New Repub. 9 (’16): supp. 6, (Hackett); 21 (’20): 321.
Poetry, 3 (’14): 182; 5 (’15): 296; 11 (’18): 214; 16 (’20): 101; 17 (’21): 262.
R. of Rs. 49 (’14): 245.
Spec. 125 (’20): 372, 604; 126 (’21): 645.
Touchstone, 2 (’18): 510.
Philip Littell—critic.
Born at Brookline, Massachusetts, 1868. A. B., Harvard, 1890. On staff of Milwaukee Sentinel, 1890-1901, and New York Globe, 1910-13. On The New Republic since 1914. His one volume is Books and Things, 1919.
Studies and Reviews
Dial, 68 (’20): 362.
No. Am. 210 (’19): 849.
See also Book Review Digest, 1919.
Jack London—novelist.
Born at San Francisco, 1876. Studied at the University of California, but left college to go to the Klondyke. In 1892, shipped before the mast. Went to Japan; hunted seal in Behring Sea. Tramped far and wide in the United States and Canada, in 1894, for social and economic study. War correspondent in the Russian-Japanese War. Traveled extensively. Socialist. Died in 1916.
His work is very uneven; but the following books are regarded as among his best:
The Call of the Wild. 1903.
The Sea-Wolf. 1904.
Martin Eden. 1909. (Autobiographical.)
John Barleycorn. 1913. (Autobiographical.)
For an account of his life and work, see The Book of Jack London, by Charmian London, 1921 (cf. Freeman, 4 [’22]: 407). For reviews, cf. the Book Review Digest, especially 1903-7, 1911, 1915.
Robert Morss Lovett—man of letters.
Born at Boston, 1870. A. B., Harvard, 1892. Taught English at Harvard, 1892-3; at Chicago, since 1893; professor since 1909. Editor of The Dial, 1919. On the staff of The New Republic, 1921—.
Bibliography
Richard Gresham. 1904. (Novel.)
A Winged Victory. 1907. (Novel.)
Cowards. 1917. (Play, published in Drama, 7.)
Studies and Reviews
Drama, 7 (’17): 325.
Amy Lowell—poet, critic.
Born at Brookline, Massachusetts, 1874. Sister of President Lowell of Harvard, and of Percival Lowell, the astronomer. Distantly related to James Russell Lowell. Educated at private schools. Traveled extensively in Europe as a child. Her visits to Egypt, Greece, and Turkey influenced her development. In 1902, she decided to become a poet and spent eight years studying, without publishing a poem. Her first poem appeared in the Atlantic, 1910.
She is a collector of Keats manuscripts and says that the poet who influenced her most profoundly was Keats. She has also made special study of Chinese poetry.
Suggestions for Reading
1. As Miss Lowell is the principal exponent of the theories of imagism and free verse in this country, careful reading of some of her critical papers leads to a better understanding of her work. Especially valuable are her studies of Paul Fort in her volume entitled Six French Poets, of “H. D.” and John Gould Fletcher in her Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, the prefaces to different volumes of her poems and to the anthologies published under the title Some Imagist Poets (1915, 1916), and her articles in the Dial, 64 (’18): 51 ff., and in Poetry, 3 (’13): 213 ff.
2. In judging her work, consider separately her poems in regular metrical form and those in free verse. Decide which method is better suited to her type of imagination.
3. To what extent does her inspiration come from cultural sources—travel, literature, art, music?
4. Consider especially her presentation of “images.” How far do these seem to be derived from direct experience? Test them by your own experience. What principles seem to determine her choice of details? Which sense impressions—sight, sound, taste, smell, touch—does she most frequently and successfully suggest? Note instances where her figures of speech sharpen the imagery and others where they seem to distort it. In what ways is the influence of Keats perceptible in her work?
5. It is worth while to make special study of the historical imagery of the poems in Can Grande’s Castle.
6. If you are familiar with the impressionistic method of painting, work out an analogy between it and Miss Lowell’s word pictures.
7. Study separately her varieties of free verse and polyphonic prose (cf. her study of Paul Fort and the preface to Can Grande’s Castle). Choose several poems in which you think the free verse form is especially adapted to the content and draw conclusions as to the problems of development of this kind of verse or of its possible influence upon regular metrical forms.
8. Use the following poem by Miss Lowell as a basis for judging her work:
Fragment What is poetry? Is it a mosaic Of colored stones which curiously are wrought Into a pattern? Rather glass that’s taught By patient labor any hue to take And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught, Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught With storied meaning for religion’s sake.
9. In summing up Miss Lowell’s achievement, consider the different phases of it that appear in her volumes taken in chronological order, noting the successive influences under which she has come. In what qualities does she stand out strikingly from other contemporary poets? Do you expect different and more important work from her in the future?
Bibliography
A Dome of Many-Colored Glass. 1912.
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed. 1914.
Six French Poets. 1915.
Men, Women and Ghosts. 1916.
Tendencies in Modern American Poetry. 1917.
Can Grande’s Castle. 1918.
Pictures of the Floating World. 1919.
Legends; Tales of Peoples. 1921.
Fir-Flower Tablets. Poems Translated from the Chinese. 1921. (With Florence Ayscough.)
Studies and Reviews
Boynton.
Hunt, R. and Snow, R. H. Amy Lowell. 1921.
Untermeyer.
Bookm. 47 (’18): 255. (Phelps.)
Chapbook, 1-2, May, 1920: 8.
Dial, 61 (’16): 528; 65 (’18): 346; 67 (’19): 331
Egoist, 1 (’14): 422; 2 (’15): 81, 109; 3 (’16): 9.
Freeman, 4 (’21): 18.
Ind. 87 (’16): 306 (portrait); 88 (’16):533 (portrait); 93 (’18): 294.
Lit. Digest, 52 (’16): 971; 63 (’19): Nov. 29, p. 31 (portraits); 72 (’22): 38.
Lond. Mer., 3 (’21): 441.
New Repub. 6 (’16): 178.
No. Am. 207 (’18): 257, 736.
Poetry, 6 (’15): 32; 9 (’17): 207; 10 (’17): 149; 13 (’18): 97; 15 (’20): 332.
Sewanee R. 28 (’20): 37.
Spec. 125 (’20): 744.
Touchstone, 2 (’18): 416; 7 (’20): 219.
George Barr McCutcheon (1866)—novelist.
The creator of Graustark. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Percy (Wallace) Mackaye—dramatist, poet.
Born in New York City, 1875, son of Steele Mackaye, dramatist and manager. A. B., Harvard, 1897. Traveled in Europe, 1898-1900, studying at the University of Leipzig, 1899-1900. Taught in private school in New York, 1900-04. Joined the colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, 1904. Since then has been engaged chiefly in dramatic work.
Bibliography
Fenris the Wolf. 1905. (Tragedy.)
The Scarecrow. 1908. (Also, Dickinson, Chief Contemporary Dramatists. 1915.)
The Playhouse and the Play. 1909. (Essays.)
A Garland to Sylvia. 1910. (Comedy.)
Anti-Matrimony. 1910. (Satirical comedy.)
Tomorrow. 1911. (Play.)
Yankee Fantasies. 1912. (One act plays.)
The Civic Theatre. 1912.
Sinbad the Sailor. 1912. (Lyric drama.)
A Thousand Years Ago. 1914. (Comedy.)
The Immigrants. 1915. (Lyric drama.)
A Substitute for War. 1915. (Essay.)
*Poems and Plays. 1916.
American Conservation Hymn. 1917.
The Community Drama. 1917. (Essay.)
Washington. 1919. (Ballad-play.)
Rip Van Winkle. 1919. (Folk-opera.)
Dogtown Common. 1921. (Verse.)
For full bibliography see Cambridge, III (IV), 770.
Studies and Reviews
Am. M. 71 (’10): 121 (portrait).
Bookm. 25 (’07): 230 (portrait), 231; 32 (’10): 256 (portrait only); 39 (’14): 376 (portrait); 47 (’18): 395.
Craftsman, 26 (’14): 139 (portrait)=R. of Rs. 49 (’14): 749 (condensed); 30 (’16): 483.
Cur. Op. 60 (’16): 408.
Everybody’s, 40 (’19): 29.
Harv. Grad. M. 17 (’09): 599 (portrait).
No. Am. 199 (’14): 290.
Survey, 35 (’16): 508.
World Today, 17 (’09): 997 (portrait).
(Charles) Edwin Markham—poet.
Born at Oregon City, Oregon, 1852. Went to California, 1857. Worked at farming, blacksmithing, and herding cattle and sheep during boyhood. Educated at San José Normal School and at Christian College, Santa Rosa. Principal and superintendent of schools in California until 1899. Made famous by the publication of The Man with the Hoe.
Bibliography
The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems. 1899.
The Man with the Hoe, with Notes by the Author. 1900.
Lincoln, and Other Poems. 1901.
California the Wonderful. 1914.
The Children in Bondage. 1914. (Study of child labor problem.)
The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems. 1915.
The Gates of Paradise. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Arena, 27 (’02): 391; 35 (’06): 143, 146.
Bookm. 27 (’08): 267; 37 (’13): 300; 41 (’15): 397.
Cur. Lit. 29 (’00): 1 (portrait), 16; 42 (’07): 317 (portrait).
Poetry, 6 (’15): 308.
R. of Rs. 30 (’04): 622 (portrait).
Jeannette(Augustus) Marks—novelist, dramatist.
Born at Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1875. A. B., Wellesley, 1900; A. M., 1903. Studied in England. Associate professor of English literature at Mt. Holyoke, 1901-10, and lecturer since 1913, where she introduced Poetry Shop Talks by writers to students. Her most interesting work has been based upon Welsh material, which she obtained by walking several summers with a knapsack in Wales. In 1911, two of Miss Marks’s one-act Welsh plays (The Merry, Merry Cuckoo, and Welsh Honeymoon) were given first prize in the Welsh National Theatre competition, notwithstanding the fact that the prize was offered for a three-act play.
Bibliography
The Cheerful Cricket and Others. 1907.
Through Welsh Doorways. 1909.
The End of a Song. 1911.
Gallant Little Wales. Sketches of its People, Places, and Customs. 1912.
Leviathan: the Record of a Struggle and a Triumph. 1913.
*Three Welsh Plays: The Merry, Merry Cuckoo; the Deacon’s Hat; Welsh Honeymoon. 1917.
Courage. 1919. (Essays.)
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 33 (’11): 116 (portrait); 44 (’17): 569 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1913-4, 1917, 1919.
Donald (Robert Perry) Marquis (Don Marquis)—humorist, “columnist,” poet.
Born at Walnut, Illinois, 1878. Newspaper man, conductor of the column called “The Sun Dial” in the New York Evening Sun.
Bibliography
Danny’s Own Story. 1912.
Dreams and Dust. 1915. (Poems.)
The Cruise of the Jasper B. 1916.
*Hermione and her Little Group of Serious Thinkers. (Satire.) 1916.
*Prefaces. 1919.
Carter and Other People. 1921.
Noah an’ Jonah an’ Cap’n John Smith. 1921.
The Old Soak, and Hail and Farewell. 1921.
Poems and Portraits. 1922.
Sonnets to a Red-Haired Lady and Famous Love Affairs. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Am. M. 84 (’17): Sept., p. 18 (portrait).
Bookm. 42 (’15): 365 (portrait), 460.
Cur. Op. 67 (’19): 119.
Everybody’s, 42 (’20): Jan., p. 29 (portrait).
Outlook, 124 (’20): 289; 126 (’20): 100. (Portraits.)
Edward Sandford Martin—satirist, man of letters.
Born at Owasco, New York, 1856. A. B., Harvard, 1877. Honorary higher degrees. Admitted to the Rochester bar, 1884. Editorial writer for Life nearly thirty years, for Harper’s Weekly about fifteen years, and for other periodicals.
Bibliography
Sly Ballades in Harvard China. 1882.
*A Little Brother of the Rich. 1890. (Verses.)
Pirated Poems. 1890.
*Windfalls of Observation. 1893.
Cousin Anthony and I. 1895.
Lucid Intervals. 1900.
Poems and Verses. 1902.
The Luxury of Children, and Other Luxuries. 1904.
The Courtship of a Careful Man. 1905.
In a New Century. 1908.
Reflections of a Beginning Husband. 1913.
The Unrest of Women. 1913.
The Diary of a Nation. 1917.
Studies and Reviews
Am. M. 71 (’11): 728 (portrait).
Bookm. 28 (’08): 301 (portrait), 324.
Critic, 42 (’03): 233 (portrait).
Harp. W. 48 (’04): 1995 (portrait).
Outlook, 90 (’08): 707 (portrait).
George Madden Martin (Mrs. Attwood R. Martin)—story writer.
Born at Louisville, Kentucky, 1866. Educated in the Louisville public schools, finishing at home on account of ill health. Made her reputation by her study of a little Kentucky girl in Emmy Lou—Her Book and Heart, 1902. For complete bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Outlook, 78 (’04): 287 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1916, 1920.
Helen Reimensnyder Martin (Pennsylvania, 1868)—novelist.
Writes about the Pennsylvania Dutch. For bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Edgar Lee Masters—poet.
Born at Garnett, Kansas, 1868, but brought up in Illinois. His schooling was desultory, but he read widely. Studied one year at Knox College; learned Greek, which influenced him strongly.
Studied law in his father’s office at Lewiston, and practiced there for a year. Then went to Chicago where he became a successful attorney and also took an active part in politics.
Mr. Masters’ fame was established by the Spoon River Anthology, which was suggested by The Greek Anthology. With this Mr. Masters had become familiar as early as 1909, through Mr. William Marion Reedy. The Spoon River Anthology first appeared in Reedy’s Mirror, under the significant pseudonym, “Webster Ford.”
Suggestions for Reading
1. Begin with The Spoon River Anthology. (Cf. the preface to Toward the Gulf.) How much does it owe to its model? to other literary sources? to the central Illinois environment in which the author grew up? What are its most conspicuous merits and defects? How do you explain each?
2. Test the sketches by your own experience of small town life. Which seem to you truest to individual character and most universal in type?
3. Compare similar sketches of personalities by Edwin Arlington Robinson, which Mr. Masters had not read until after his book was published.
4. Consider how far Mr. Masters has achieved his avowed purpose “to analyze society, to satirise society, to tell a story, to expose the machinery of life, to present a working model of the big world”; to create beauty, and to depict “our sorrows and hopes, our religious failures, successes and visions, our poor little lives, rounded by a sleep, in language and figures emotionally tuned to bring all of us closer together in understanding and affection.”
5. How do you explain the sudden popularity of the Anthology? What are its chances of becoming a classic?
6. Read one of Mr. Masters’ later volumes and compare it with the Anthology as to merits and defects.
7. Mr. Masters has always been a great reader. Trace, as far as you can, the influence of the following authors: Homer; the Bible; Poe; Keats; Shelley; Swinburne; Browning.
8. Draw parallels between his work and the work of (1) Edwin Arlington Robinson, q. v., (2) of Robert Frost, q. v., (3) of Vachel Lindsay, q. v., and (4) of Carl Sandburg, q. v.
9. An interesting study might be made of the effects of Mr. Masters’ legal training upon his poetry.
10. Compare Children of the Market Place with the Anthology or Domesday Book. Is Mr. Masters more successful as poet or as novelist?
Bibliography
A Book of Verses. 1898.
Maximilian. 1902. (Drama in blank verse.)
The New Star Chamber and Other Essays. 1904.
Blood of the Prophets. 1905.
Althea. 1907. (Play.)
The Trifler. 1908. (Play.)
*The Spoon River Anthology. 1915.
Songs and Satires. 1916.
The Great Valley. 1916.
Toward the Gulf. 1918.
Starved Rock. 1919.
Domesday Book. 1920.
Mitch Miller. 1920. (Boy’s story.)
The Open Sea. 1921.
Children of the Market Place. 1922. (Novel.)
Studies and Reviews
Boynton.
Lowell.
Untermeyer.
Ath. 1916, 2: 323, 520.
Bookm. 41 (’15): 355, 432; 44 (’16): 264 (Kilmer); 47 (’18): 262. (Phelps.)
Bookm. (Lond.) 49 (’16): 187; 52 (’17): 153.
Chapbook, 1-2, May, 1920: 11.
Cur. Op. 58 (’15): 356; 60 (’16): 127.
Dial, 60 (’16): 415, 498; 61 (’16): 528.
Forum, 55 (’16): 109, 118, 121.
Ind. 88 (’16): 533 (portrait).
Lit. Digest, 52 (’16): 564 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Apr. 13, 1917: 173; May 19, 1921: 318.
New Repub. 20 (’19): supp. 10.
New Statesman, 6 (’16): 332; 7 (’16): 593.
Poetry, 6 (’15): 145; 8 (’16): 148; 9 (’17): 202; 12 (’18): 150; 16 (’20): 151.
R. of Rs. 51 (’15): 758 (portrait).
So. Atlan. Q. 16 (’17): 155.
Touchstone, 3 (’18): 172.
(James) Brander Matthews—critic, man of letters.
Born at New Orleans, 1852. A. B., Columbia, 1871, LL. B., 1873, A. M., 1874. Many honorary higher degrees. Admitted to the bar in 1873, but took up writing. Professor at Columbia since 1892.
Bibliography
The Theatres of Paris. 1880.
French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. 1881.
In Partnership; Studies in Story-Telling. 1884. (With H. C. Bunner.)
With My Friends; Tales Told in Partnership. 1891.
The Story of a Story and Other Stories. 1893.
Studies of the Stage. 1894.
Vignettes of Manhattan. 1894.
Aspects of Fiction. 1896.
Outlines in Local Color. 1898.
The Historical Novel. 1901.
The Philosophy of the Short Story. 1901.
A Study of the Drama. 1910.
Vistas of New York. 1912.
A Book about the Theatre. 1916.
These Many Years. Recollections of a New Yorker. 1917.
The Principles of Playmaking. 1919.
Essays on English. 1921.
For complete bibliography, cf. Who’s Who in America and Cambridge, III (IV), 771.
Studies and Reviews
Halsey.
Bk. Buyer, 22 (’21): 15 (portrait).
Bookm. 31 (’10): 117.
Forum, 39 (’08): 377.
Ind. 69 (’10): 1085 (portrait).
Internat. Q. 4 (’01): 289.
Outlook, 78 (’04): 879 (portrait); 102 (’12): 645 (portrait), 649; 117 (’17): 640. (Lyman Abbott.)
Putnam’s, 1 (’07): 708 (portrait).
Spec. 106 (’11): 969; 114 (’15): 686.
H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken—critic, man of letters.
Born at Baltimore, Maryland, 1880, of German ancestry. Graduate of Baltimore Polytechnic, 1896. On the Baltimore Herald, 1903-5, and Baltimore Sun, 1906-17. Became literary critic for The Smart Set, 1908, and (with George Jean Nathan), editor, 1914—. War correspondent in Germany and Russia, 1917. Much interested in music.
Bibliography
Ventures Into Verse. 1903.
George Bernard Shaw, His Plays. 1905.
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. 1908.
Men vs. the Man. 1910. (With R. R. LaMonte.)
The Artist. 1912.
Europe After 8:15. 1914. (With George Jean Nathan, q. v., and Willard Huntingdon Wright.)
A Book of Burlesques. 1916.
A Little Book in C Major. 1916.
A Book of Prefaces. 1917.
In Defense of Women. 1918.
Damn: a Book of Calumny. 1918.
The American Language. 1919. (Revised ed., 1922.)
Prejudices: First Series. 1919.
The American Credo; a Contribution toward the Interpretation of the National Mind. 1920. (With George Jean Nathan, q. v.)
Prejudices: Second Series. 1920.
Heliogabalus, a Buffoonery in Three Acts. 1920. (With George Jean Nathan, q. v.)
Prejudices: Third Series.
Studies and Reviews
Hatteras, O. A. J. Pistols for Two. 1917.
Rascoe, Burton, and Others (Vincent O’Sullivan, q. v., and F. C. Henderson). H. L. Mencken. Brief Appreciations and a Bibliography. 1920.
Ath. 1920, 1: 10.
Bookm. 41 (’15): 46 (portrait), 56; 53 (’21): 79; 54 (’22): 551 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 66 (’19): 391 (portrait); 71 (’21): 360.
Dial, 68 (’20): 267.
Freeman, 1 (’20): 88.
Liv. Age, 303 (’19): 798.
New Repub. 21 (’20): 239; 26 (’21): 191; 27 (’21): 10.
Little Review, 5 (’18): Jan., p. 10.
New Statesman, 14 (’20): 748.
George Middleton—dramatist.
Born at Paterson, New Jersey, 1880. A. B., Columbia, 1902. Married Fola La Follette, 1911. Literary editor of La Follette’s Weekly, 1912—.
Bibliography
*Embers; with The Failures, The Gargoyle, In His House, Madonna, The Man Masterful: One-Act Plays of Contemporary Life. 1911.
Tradition, with On Bail, Their Wife, Waiting, The Cheat of Pity, and Mothers: One-Act Plays of Contemporary Life, 1913.
Nowadays; a Contemporaneous Comedy. 1914.
Criminals; a One-Act Play about Marriage. 1915.
Back of the Ballot; a Woman Suffrage Farce in One Act. 1915.
Possession, with The Groove, The Unborn, Circles, A Good Woman, The Black-Tie: One-Act Plays of Contemporary Life. 1915.
The Road Together; a Contemporaneous Drama in Four Acts. 1916.
Masks, Jim’s Beast, Tides, Among the Lions, The Reason, The House: One-Act Plays of Contemporary Life. 1920. (With Guy Bolton.)
For bibliography of unpublished work, see Who’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 51 (’20): 472.
Cur. Op. 56 (’14): 376 (portrait); 68 (’20): 783 (portrait).
Freeman, 1 (’20): 449.
Nation, 110 (’20): 693.
New Repub. 24 (’20): 26.
See also Book Review Digest, 1913-6, 1920.
Lloyd Mifflin—poet.
Born at Columbia, Pennsylvania, 1846. Son of an artist. Educated at Washington Classical Institute and by tutors. Studied art with his father and in Germany and Italy. Began as a painter, but later turned to poetry. Is best known for his sonnets, the form in which most of his poetry is written. These may be studied in his Collected Sonnets, 1905 (revised edition, 1907), although several volumes have been published since then.
Studies and Reviews
Cur. Lit. 39 (’05): 106 (portrait).
Dial, 40 (’06): 125; 47 (’09): 100.
Nation, 81 (’05): 17, 508.
See also Book Review Digest, 1905.
Edna St. Vincent Millay—poet, dramatist.
Born at Rockland, Maine, 1892. A. B., Vassar, 1917. Connected with the Provincetown players both as dramatist and as actress.
Miss Millay’s first poem, “Renascence,” was published in The Lyric Year, 1912.
Suggestions for Reading
1. The poems need to be read aloud to give the full effect of their passion and lyric beauty.
2. Compare Miss Millay’s naïveté with that of Blake. Do you find suggestions of philosophy behind it or sheer emotion?
3. Does Miss Millay’s later work show growth toward greatness or toward sophisticated cleverness?
Bibliography
Renascence and other Poems. 1917.
A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Four Sonnets. 1920.
Aria da Capo. 1920. (Play; published in The Monthly Chapbook, 1920.)
Second April. 1921.
The Lamp and the Bell. 1921. (Play.)
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Freeman, 1 (’20): 307; 4 (’21): 189.
Poetry, 13 (’18): 167; 19 (’21): 151.
See also Book Review Digest, 1918, 1921.
Enos A(bijah) Mills—Nature writer.
Born near Kansas City, Kansas, 1870. Self-educated. Worked on a ranch fourteen years. Foreman in a mine. Went to the Rocky Mountains early in life. Built a home on Long’s Peak, Colorado, 1886. Has explored the Rocky Mountains extensively, alone, on foot, and without firearms. Colorado “snow observer” for Government, 1907, 1908.
Mr. Mills has done valuable work for the protection of wild animals and flowers and for the establishment of national parks. His work belongs with that of Thoreau, Burroughs, and Muir (by whom he was influenced to continue it) for its freshly observed Nature content.
Among his best-known books are, perhaps, The Story of a Thousand Year Pine, 1914, and The Story of Scotch, 1916 (dog story).
For complete bibliography, see Who’s Who in America.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 51 (’20): 103.
Lit. Digest, 55 (’17): July 14, p. 44.
Sunset, 38 (’17): 40 (portrait).
Philip Moeller—dramatist.
Bibliography
Helena’s Husband. 1916.
Madame Sand; a Biographical Comedy. 1917.
Five Somewhat Historical Plays. 1918. (Helena’s Husband; A Road-house in Arden; Sisters of Susannah; The Little Supper; Pokey.) (Burlesques.)
Two Blind Beggars and One Less Blind; a Tragic Comedy in One Act. 1918.
Molière; a Romantic Play in Three Acts. 1919.
Sophie, a Comedy. 1919. (Prologue by Carl Van Vechten.)
Studies and Reviews
See Book Review Digest, 1918, 1920.
Harriet Monroe (Illinois)—critic, poet.
Editor of Poetry, 1912—. Compiler of The New Poetry; an Anthology (with Alice Corbin, q. v.), 1917. For bibliography of her poems, cf. Who’s Who in America.
Marianne Moore—poet.
Her reputation was established by her poems in Others, 1916, 1917, 1919, and in the Dial and Poetry (passim). Her first volume, Poems, was published in 1921. Cf. Poetry, 20 (’22): 208.
Paul Elmer More—critic, man of letters.
Born at St. Louis, 1864. A. B., Washington University, 1887; A. M., 1892; Harvard, 1893. Honorary higher degrees. Taught Sanskrit at Harvard, 1894-5; Sanskrit and classical literature at Bryn Mawr, 1895-7. Literary editor of The Independent, 1901-3; New York Evening Post, 1903-9. Editor of The Nation, 1909-14.
Bibliography
A Century of Indian Epigrams; Chiefly from the Sanskrit of Bhartrihari. 1898.
The Jessica Letters, an Editor’s Romance. 1904. (With Mrs. L. H. Harris.)
*Shelburne Essays, (11 volumes.) 1904-21.
Nietzsche. 1912.
Platonism. 1917.
The Religion of Plato. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Pattee.
Acad. 80 (’11): 353.
Ath. 1909, 1: 67; 1920, 1: 703.
Bookm. (Lond.) 44 (’13): 256; 58 (’20): 207.
Critic, 45 (’04): 395 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 55 (’13): 126.
Ind. 65 (’08): 1337 (portrait).
Outlook, 81 (’05): 678.
Philos. R. 26 (’17): 409.
Putnam’s, 1 (’07): 716 (portrait) 752.
Review, 2 (’20): 54.
R. of Rs. 60 (’19): 190 (portrait).
Sat. Rev. 132 (’21): 323.
Sewanee R. 26 (’18): 63.
Spec. 116 (’16): 632; 125 (’20): 113.
Christopher (Darlington) Morley—essayist, poet.
Born at Haverford, Pennsylvania, 1890. A. B., Haverford College, 1910. Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, 1910-13. Editorial staff Doubleday, Page and Company, 1913-17; Ladies Home Journal, 1917-18; Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, 1918-20. In 1920, began his column, “The Bowling Green” in the New York Evening Post.
Bibliography
The Eighth Sin. 1912.
Parnassus on Wheels. 1917.
Songs for a Little House. 1917.
Shandygaff. 1918.
The Rocking Horse. 1919.
The Haunted Book Shop. 1919.
In the Sweet Dry and Dry. 1919. (With Bart Haley.)
Mince Pie. 1919.
Travels in Philadelphia. 1920.
Kathleen. 1920.
Hide and Seek. 1920. (Poems.)
Chimneysmoke. 1921.
Modern Essays. 1921. (Compilation.)
Plum Pudding. 1921.
Tales from a Roll-Top Desk. 1921.
Where the Blue Begins. 1922.
Thursday Evening. 1922. (Play.)
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 46 (’18): 657 (portrait).
Everybody’s 42 (’20): Feb., p. 29 (portrait).
Ind. 94 (’18): 412 (portrait).
Lit. Digest, 63 (’19): Oct. 18, p. 27=Liv. Age, 303 (’19): 170.
Outlook, 124 (’20): 202 (portrait).
George Jean Nathan—critic, man of letters.
Born at Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1882. A. B., Cornell, 1904. On editorial staff of the New York Herald, 1904-6. On the staffs of various magazines, including Harper’s Weekly, the Associated Sunday Magazine, and the Smart Set, usually as dramatic critic, 1906-14. With James Huneker (q. v.) dramatic critic for Puck, 1915-6. Dramatic critic for the National Syndicate of Newspapers since 1912. Editor since 1914 of The Smart Set (with H. L. Mencken, q. v.).
Bibliography
Europe After 8:15. 1914. (With H. L. Mencken, q. v., and Willard Huntingdon Wright.)
Another Book on the Theatre. 1916.
Bottoms Up. 1917.
Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents. 1917.
A Book Without a Title. 1918.
The Popular Theatre. 1918.
Comedians All. 1919.
Heliogabalus. 1920. (With H. L. Mencken, q. v.)
The American Credo. 1920. (With H. L. Mencken, q. v.).
The Theatre, the Drama, the Girls. 1921.
The Critic and the Drama. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Hatteras, O. A. J. Pistols for Two. 1917.
Bookm. 43 (’16): 282 (portrait only); 53 (’21): 163.
Cur. Op. 63 (’17): 95 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1919, 1920.
Robert Nathan—novelist.
Author of: Peter Kindred. 1919.
Autumn. 1921.
Cf. Book Review Digest, 1919, 1921.
John G(neisenau) Neihardt—poet.
Born at Sharpsburg, Illinois, 1881. Finished scientific course at Nebraska Normal College, 1897; Litt. D., University of Nebraska, 1917. Lived among the Omaha Indians, 1901-7, studying them and their folk lore. Has worked many years on an American epic cycle of pioneer life. Shared with Gladys Cromwell (q. v.) the prize of the Poetry Society of America, 1919.
Bibliography
A Bundle of Myrrh. 1907.
Man-Song. 1909.
The River and I. 1910.
The Dawn-Builder. 1911.
The Stranger at the Gate. 1912.
The Death of Agrippina. 1913. (Also in Poetry, 2 [’13]:33.)
Life’s Lure. 1914.
The Song of Hugh Glass. 1915.
The Quest. 1916. (Collected lyrics.)
*The Song of Three Friends. 1919.
The Splendid Wayfaring. 1920.
The Two Mothers. 1921. (Eight Hundred Rubles; Agrippina.)
Studies and Reviews
House, J. T. John G. Neihardt: Man and Poet. 1920.
Bookm. 47 (’18): 395; 49 (’19): 496.
Lit. Digest, 69 (’21): May 14, p. 31 (portrait).
Poetry, 7 (’16): 264; 17 (’20): 94.
Putnam’s, 4 (’08): 473, 506 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1919, 1920.
A(lfred) Edward Newton—essayist.
Born at Philadelphia, 1863. Educated in private schools. Business man. Collector of first editions of books, especially of the eighteenth century.
Bibliography
The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections. 1918.
A Magnificent Farce, and Other Diversions of a Book-Collector. 1921.
For reviews, see Book Review Digest, 1921.
Meredith Nicholson—novelist, man of letters.
Born at Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1866. His reputation was founded upon the novel, The House of a Thousand Candles, 1905. He has published also several volumes of essays and studies, beginning with The Hoosiers (National Studies in American Letters), 1900. Note among them The Valley of Democracy, 1918, a characterization of the Middle West. For bibliography, cf. Who’s Who In America.
Charles Gilman Norris—novelist.
Brother of Frank Norris, the novelist. Married Kathleen Thompson (cf. Kathleen Norris).
Bibliography
The Amateur.
Salt: The Education of Griffith Adams. 1918.
Brass. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 47 (’18): 679.
New Repub. 29 (’21): 48. (Lovett.)
See also Book Review Digest, 1918, 1921.
Kathleen Norris—novelist.
Born at San Francisco, 1880. Educated privately. Had experience as business woman. Married Charles Gilman Norris (q. v.), 1909.
Bibliography
Mother. 1911.
The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne. 1912.
*“Saturday’s Child.” 1914.
The Story of Julia Page. 1915.
The Heart of Rachael. 1916.
Martie, the Unconquered. 1917.
The Beloved Woman. 1921.
Lucretia Lombard. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Overton.
Bookm. 34 (’11): 437 (portrait); 37 (’13): 109 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1911, 1913-7.
Grace Fallow Norton—poet.
Born at Northfield, Minnesota, 1876.
Bibliography
Little Gray Songs from St. Joseph’s. 1912.
The Sister of the Wind. 1914.
Roads. 1916.
What is Your Legion? 1916.
Studies and Reviews
Poetry, 5 (’14): 87; 11 (’17): 164.
See also Book Review Digest, 1912, 1914, 1916.
Frederick O’Brien—travel writer.
Mr. O’Brien’s account of his experiences in the Marquesas Islands created a literary fashion for the South Sea Islands.
Bibliography
White Shadows in the South Seas. 1919.
Mystic Isles of the South Seas. 1921.
See Book Review Digest, 1919, 1921.
Eugene Gladstone O’Neill—dramatist.
Born in New York City, 1888. Son of the actor, James O’Neill. Studied at Princeton, 1906-7. Much of the material used in his plays seems to be drawn from or based upon his adventurous experiences between 1907 and 1914. Actor and newspaper reporter. Spent two years at sea. In 1909, is said to have gone on a gold-prospecting expedition in Spanish Honduras (cf. Gold). Lived in the Argentine. Threatened tuberculosis gave him his first leisure (cf. The Straw). In 1914-5, he studied dramatization at Harvard. In 1918, when he married, he went to live in a deserted life-saving station near Provincetown. Associated with the Provincetown Players. In 1920, his Beyond the Horizon was given the Pulitzer Prize.
Suggestions for Reading
1. What effect has Mr. O’Neill’s life experience had upon the quality of his plays?
2. What evidence of originality do you find in his (1) themes, (2) background, and (3) technique?
3. Consider the influence of Joseph Conrad (cf. Manly and Rickert, Contemporary British Literature) upon O’Neill. Read especially The Nigger of the “Narcissus.”
4. How has Mr. O’Neill been influenced by the plays of John Millington Synge?
5. What do you make of the fact that Mr. O’Neill has struck out in various directions instead of working a particular vein?
6. What reasons do you find for the common opinion that he is our most promising dramatist? What limitations or weaknesses do you think may interfere with his development? Do you think he will become a great dramatist?
Bibliography
Thirst, and Other One-Act Plays. 1914. (The Web, Warnings, Fog, Recklessness.)
Before Breakfast. 1916.
The Moon of the Caribbees, and Other Plays of the Sea. 1919. (Bound East for Cardiff; The Long Voyage Home; In the Zone; Ile; Where the Cross is Made; The Rope.)
*Chris Christopherson. 1919. (Produced as Anna Christie, quoted with illustrations, Cur. Op. 72 [’22]: 57.)
*Beyond the Horizon. 1920.
Gold. 1920.
The Emperor Jones; Diff’rent; The Straw. 1921.
The Hairy Ape; Anna Christie; The First Man. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 53 (’21): 511; 54 (’22): 463.
Century, 103 (’22): 351 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 65 (’18): 159 (portrait); 68 (’20): 339.
Everybody’s, 43 (’20): July, p. 49 (portrait).
Freeman, 1 (’20): 44.
Ind. 105 (’21): 158 (portrait).
Nation, 113 (’21): 626.
New Repub. 25 (’21): 173.
Theatre Arts M. 4 (’20): 286; 5 (’21): 174 (portrait only).
James Oppenheim—novelist, short-story writer, poet.
Born at St. Paul, Minnesota, 1882. Two years later his family moved to New York, where he has lived ever since. Special student at Columbia, 1901-3. Has done settlement work, as assistant head worker of the Hudson Guild Settlement. Superintendent of the Hebrew Technical School for Girls, 1904-7. In 1916-7 edited the magazine, The Seven Arts (cf. Poetry, 9 [’16-’17]: 214).
Suggestions for Reading
1. The following influences have entered largely into Oppenheim’s work: Whitman, the Bible, and the theories of psycho-analysis developed by Freud and Jung. Without considering these, no fair estimate of the value of his work can be reached.
2. In what respects does his poetry reflect the Oriental temperament?
3. What strength do you find in his work? what weakness?
Bibliography
Doctor Rast. 1909. (Short stories.)
Monday Morning and Other Poems. 1909.
Wild Oats. 1910. (Novel.)
The Pioneers. 1910. (Poetic play.)
*Pay-Envelopes. 1911. (Short stories.)
The Nine-Tenths. 1911. (Novel.)
The Olympian: A Story for the City. 1912.
Idle Wives. 1914.
*Songs for the New Age. 1914.
The Beloved. 1915.
War and Laughter. 1916. (Poems.)
The Book of Self. 1917. (Poems.)
Night. 1918. (Poetic drama in one act.)
*The Solitary. 1919. (Poems.)
The Mystic Warrior. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Acad. 89 (’15): 218.
Bookm. 30 (’09): 322 (portrait), 393.
Dial, 67 (’19): 301.
Ind. 88 (’16): 533 (portrait).
Nation, 109 (’19): 441.
New Statesman, 6 (’16): 332.
Outlook, 102 (’12): 207 (portrait).
Poetry, 5 (’14): 88; 11 (’18): 219; 16 (’20): 49; 20 (’22): 216.
R. of Rs. 47 (’13): 243 (portrait)
Vincent O’Sullivan—novelist.
Of American birth, but has lived many years in England. His work published in the time of the Yellow Book was especially admired by the English critic, Edward Garnett, who maintained that Mr. O’Sullivan should rank high among our writers. American editions of The Good Girl and Sentiment were published in 1917.
Bibliography
A Book of Bargains. 1896. (With frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley.)
Poems. 1896.
The Houses of Sin. 1897. (Poems.)
Green Window. 1899.
A Dissertation upon Second Fiddles. 1902.
Human Affairs. 1905.
The Good Girl. 1912.
Sentiment and Other Stories. 1913.
See Book Review Digest, 1917.
Thomas Nelson Page—novelist, short-story writer.
Born on a Virginia plantation, 1853. Studied a short time at Washington and Lee University. Many higher honorary degrees. Practiced law in Richmond, Virginia, 1875-93. Ambassador to Italy, 1913-9.
Mr. Page is one of the pioneer writers in negro dialects. His first collection of short stories, In Ole Virginia, 1887, is his best-known work.
For bibliography, see Cambridge, III (IV), 668. For biography and criticism, see Halsey, Harkins, Pattee, Toulmin, and the Book Review Digest, especially for 1906, 1909, 1913.
Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs. L. S. Marks)—poet, dramatist.
Born in New York City. Educated at Girls’ Latin School, Boston, and at Radcliffe, 1894-6. Instructor in English at Wellesley College, 1901-3. Her play The Piper obtained the Stratford-on-Avon prize in 1910. Died in 1922.
Bibliography
The Wayfarers—A Book of Verse. 1898.
Fortune and Men’s Eyes—New Poems with a Play. 1900.
Marlowe, a Drama. 1901.
The Singing Leaves. 1903.
Pan—A Choric Idyl. 1904.
The Wings. 1905. (Play.)
The Book of the Little Past. 1908.
The Piper. 1909. (Play.)
The Singing Man. 1911. (Poems.)
The Wolf of Gubbio. 1913. (Play.)
Harvest Moon. 1916. (War poems.)
The Chameleon. 1917.
Portrait of Mrs. W. 1922.
Studies and Reviews
Eaton, W. P. Plays and Players, 1916.
Moses.
Rittenhouse.
Bk. Buyer, 21 (’00): 9 (portrait).
Bookm. 32 (’10): 7 (portrait); 47 (’18): 550.
Critic, 40 (’02): 14 (portrait).
Cur. Lit. 49 (’10): 435 (portrait).
New Eng. M. n. s. 33 (’05): 426; 39 (’08): 225 (portrait), 236; 42 (’10): 270 (portrait).
Poetry, 9 (’17): 269.
Bliss Perry—critic.
Born at Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1860. A. B., Williams, 1881; A. M., 1883. Studied at the universities of Berlin and Strassburg. Honorary higher degrees. Professor of English at Williams College, 1886-93; at Princeton, 1893-1900. Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1899-1909. Professor of English literature at Harvard, 1907—. Harvard lecturer at University of Paris, 1909-10.
Bibliography
The Broughton House. 1890.
Salem Kittredge, and Other Stories. 1894.
The Plated City. 1895.
The Powers at Play. 1899. (Short stories.)
A Study of Prose Fiction. 1902.
The Amateur Spirit. 1904.
Park St. Papers. 1909.
The American Mind. 1912.
The American Spirit in Literature. 1918.
The Study of Poetry. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 12 (’00): 359, 362 (portrait); 36 (’12): 443.
Dial, 70 (’21): 347.
Lit. W. 30 (’99): 264.
Outlook, 78 (’04): 880 (portrait); 102 (’12): 648.
R. of Rs. 34 (’06): Dec., p. 758; 46 (’12): Dec., p. 749. (Portraits.)
Spec. 110 (’13): 809.
William Lyon Phelps—critic.
Born at New Haven, Connecticut, 1865. A. B., Yale, 1887; Ph. D. 1891; A. M., Harvard, 1891. Instructor in English literature at Yale, 1892-6, assistant professor of the English language and literature, 1896-1901; Lampson professor since 1901. Deacon in the Baptist Church.
Bibliography
Essays on Modern Novelists. 1910.
Essays on Russian Novelists. 1911.
Essays on Books. 1914.
Browning. 1915.
The Advance of the English Novel. 1916.
The Advance of English Poetry. 1918.
Archibald Marshall. 1918.
The Twentieth Century Theatre. 1918.
Reading the Bible. 1919.
Essays on Modern Dramatists. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 41 (’15): 585 (portrait), 587; 31 (’10): 349 (portrait).
Ind. 71 (’11): 815 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Mar. 17, 1910: 95.
Poetry, 14 (’19): 159.
R. of Rs. 45 (’12): 103 (portrait).
David Pinski—dramatist.
Born in Russia, 1873. Educated at the University of Berlin, 1897-9. Came to the United States, 1899. Studied at Columbia, 1903-4. President of Pinski-Massel Press. President of Jewish National Workers’ Alliance. Socialist-Zionist.
His reputation is based principally upon his five volumes of plays and two of stories in Yiddish, but he has also written in English.
Bibliography (of works in English)
The Treasure. 1916. (Comedy.)
Three Plays. 1918.
Little Heroes; The Stranger. 1918. (In Goldberg, I., Six Plays of the Yiddish Theatre. Second Series.)
Studies and Reviews
Cambridge.
See also Book Review Digest, 1918-20.
Edwin Ford Piper (Nebraska, 1871)—poet.
Mr. Piper’s volume, (Barbed Wire and Other Poems, 1917) reflects the prairies of the Middle West.
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Poetry, 12 (’18): 276.
See also Book Review Digest, 1917.
Ernest Poole—novelist.
Born at Chicago, 1880. A. B., Princeton, 1902. Lived in University Settlement, New York, 1902-5, studying social conditions, especially in connection with child labor, and in the movement to fight tuberculosis. He helped Upton Sinclair (q. v.) gather stockyards material for The Jungle. War correspondent in Germany and France, 1914-5. As a socialist, Mr. Poole also worked for a time in Russia with the revolutionaries.
The familiarity with dockyards and dockmen, which is such a striking feature of The Harbor, dates back to Mr. Poole’s boyhood.
Bibliography
The Voice of the Street. 1906.
The Harbor. 1915.
His Family. 1917.
His Second Wife. 1918.
The Village. 1918.
“The Dark People,” Russia’s Crisis. 1918.
Blind. 1920.
Beggar’s Gold. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Bookm. 41 (’15): 115 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 58 (’15): 266 (portrait).
Ind. 94 (’18): 229 (portrait).
Mentor, 6 (’18): 7 (portrait).
R. of Rs. 51 (’15): 631 (portrait).
Unpop. R. 6 (’16): 231.
World Today, 18 (’10): 232 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1920.
Ezra (Loomis) Pound—poet, critic.
Born at Hailey, Idaho, 1885. Of English descent; on his mother’s side distantly related to Longfellow. Ph. B., Hamilton College. Fellow of the University of Pennsylvania. Traveled in Spain, in Italy, in Provence, 1906-7; lived in Venice, and finally made his home in England. London editor of The Little Review, 1917-9, and foreign correspondent of Poetry, 1912-9.
Suggestions for Reading
1. Mr. Pound is an experimenter in verse, who has come under many influences and belonged to many schools. His work should be studied chronologically to discover these changes in interest and relationship. To be noted among the influences are: (1) the mediæval poetry of Provence; (2) the Greek poets; (3) the Latin poets of the Empire; (4) among modern French poets, Laurent Tailhade; (5) the poets of China and Japan, whom he learned to know through the manuscript notes of Ernest Fenollosa; (6) the work of the English Imagists (cf. especially the poems of T. E. Hulme, published in Mr. Pound’s volume called Ripostes); (7) the work of the Vorticist school of poets and artists (cf. Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis), and the more accessible periodical, The Egoist, of which Richard Aldington (cf. Manly and Rickert, Contemporary British Literature) is assistant editor.
2. Consider also this from his own theory of poetry: “Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres and the like, but equations for the human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.”
Can this be related to the qualities of Mr. Pound’s poetry?
3. After reading Mr. Pound’s output, discuss the adequacy of the following: “When content has become for an artist merely something to inflate and display form with, then the petty serves as well as the great, the ignoble equally with the lofty, the unlovely like the beautiful, the sordid as the clean.... Real feeling consequently becomes rarer, and the artist descends to trivialities of observation, vagaries of assertion, or mere bravado of standards and expression—pure tilting at convention.”
Bibliography
Provença: Poems Selected from Personæ, Exultations, and Canzoniere. 1910.
The Spirit of Romance. 1910.
The Sonnets and Ballate of Cavalcanti. 1912. (Translations.)
Ripostes of Ezra Pound, whereto are Appended the Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme. 1912.
Gaudier Brzeska; a Memoir. 1916.
Lustra of Ezra Pound, with Earlier Poems. 1917.
Noh; or, Accomplishment; a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan. 1917. (With Ernest F. Fenollosa.)
Pavannes and Divisions. 1918. (Essays and sketches.)
Quia Pauper Amavi. 1919. (English edition.)
Instigations, 1920. (Criticism.)
*Umbra: the Early Poems of Ezra Pound, All That He Now Wishes to Keep in Circulation from “Personæ,” “Exultations,” “Ripostes.” With Translations from Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel and Poems by the Late T. E. Hulme. 1920.
Also in: Des Imagistes. 1914.
Poetry. (Passim.)
The Little Review. (Passim.)
Cf. also Ezra Pound, his Metric and Poetry. 1917. (Bibliography, p. 29.)
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Acad. 81 (’11): 354.
Ath. 1911, 2: 238; 1919, 2: 1065, 1132, 1268.
Bookm. 35 (’12): 156; 46 (’18): 577.
Bookm. (Lond.) 36 (’09): 154 (portrait); 52 (’17): 151.
Chapbook, 1-2: May, 1920: 22. (Fletcher.)
Dial, 54 (’13): 370; 69 (’20): 283 (portrait); 72 (’22): 87.
Egoist, 2 (’15): 71; 4 (’17): 7, 27, 44.
Eng. Rev. 2 (’09): 627.
Ind. 70 (’11): 259 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Sept. 20, 1918: 437.
New Repub. 16 (’18): 83.
New Statesman, 8 (’17): 332, 476.
No. Am. 211 (’20): 658. (May Sinclair.)
Poetry, 7 (’16): 249 (Carl Sandburg); 11 (’18): 330; 12 (’18): 221; 14 (’19): 52 (William Gardner Hale); 15 (’20): 211; 16 (’20): 213.
(John) Herbert Quick (Iowa, 1861)—novelist.
Farmer, lawyer, editor of Farm and Fireside, 1909-16. Author of The Fairview Idea, 1919; and of Vandemark’s Folly 1922, which introduces fresh material (canalboat life) into fiction, and also contributes to the literature that deals with the opening up of the middle west.
See Book Review Digest, 1919.
Lizette Woodworth Reese—poet.
Born at Baltimore, in 1856. Educated in private and public schools. Teacher in Baltimore high school.
Her poems, always conventional in form and limited in ideas, are admired for their simplicity, intensity of emotion, and perfection of technique.
Bibliography
A Branch of May. 1887.
A Handful of Lavender. 1891.
A Quiet Road. 1896.
A Wayside Lute. 1909.
Spicewood. 1920.
Studies and Reviews
Rittenhouse.
Untermeyer.
Agnes Repplier—essayist.
Born at Philadelphia, 1858, of French extraction. Educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, Torresdale, Pennsylvania. Litt. D., University of Pennsylvania, 1902. Has traveled much in Europe. Roman Catholic.
Bibliography
Books and Men. 1888.
Points of View. 1891.
Essays in Miniature. 1892.
Essays in Idleness. 1893.
In the Dozy Hours. 1894.
Varia. 1897.
The Fireside Sphinx. 1901.
Compromises. 1904.
In Our Convent Days. 1905.
A Happy Half Century. 1908.
Americans and Others. 1912.
The Cat. 1912. (Compilation.)
Counter Currents. 1915.
Points of Friction. 1920.
STUDIES AND REVIEWS
Halsey. (Women.)
Pattee.
Critic, 45 (’04): 302; 47 (’05): 204. (Portraits).
Lit. Digest, 48 (’14): 827 (portrait).
Lond. Times, Aug. 10, 1916: 378.
New Repub. 7 (’16): 20. (Francis Hackett.)
New Statesman, 7 (’16): 597.
Outlook, 78 (’04): 880 (portrait).
Spec. 117 (’16): 105.
Alice (Caldwell) Hegan Rice (Mrs. Cale Young Rice)—novelist.
Born at Shelbyville, Kentucky, 1870. Educated in private schools. One of the founders of the Cabbage Patch Settlement House, Louisville. Uses her own experience in charity work in her books.
Bibliography
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. 1901.
Lovey Mary. 1903.
Sandy. 1905.
Captain June. 1907.
Mr. Opp. 1909.
A Romance of Billy Goat Hill. 1912.
The Honorable Percival. 1914.
Calvary Alley. 1917.
Miss Mink’s Soldier and Other Stories. 1918.
Turn About Tales. 1920. (With Cale Young Rice, q. v.)
Quin. 1921.
Studies and Reviews
Overton.
Bookm. 29 (’09): 412; 32 (’10): 369.
Bookm. (Lond.) 24 (’03): 158 (portrait), 160.
Outlook, 72 (’02): 802 (portrait); 78 (’04): 282, 286 (portrait).
See also Book Review Digest, 1905, 1907, 1909, 1912, 1918.
Cale Young Rice (Kentucky, 1872)—poet, dramatist.
Collected Plays and Poems. 1915.
For later volumes, cf. Who’s Who in America.
Lola Ridge—poet, critic.
Born at Dublin, Ireland, but brought up in Sydney, Australia. As a child, lived also in New Zealand, but studied art in Australia. In 1907 she came to the United States and supported herself for three years by writing fiction for the popular magazines. But finding that this work was going to kill her creative ability, she earned her living in a variety of other ways—as organizer, advertisement writer, illustrator, artist’s model, factory worker, etc.—while she wrote poems. Her reputation was made by the publication of The Ghetto in 1918.
Bibliography
The Ghetto and Other Poems. 1918.
Sun-up and Other Poems. 1920.
Also in: Others, 1919.
Studies and Reviews
Untermeyer.
Dial, 66 (’18): 83. (Aiken.)
New Repub. 17 (’18): 76. (Hackett.)
Poetry, 13 (’19): 335; 17 (’21): 332.
See also Book Review Digest, 1918, 1920.
James Whitcomb Riley—poet.
Born at Greenfield, Indiana, 1853, of Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. Educated in the public schools, but received many higher honorary degrees. Died in 1916.
Mr. Riley came to be the representative poet of his native state, the “Hoosier poet,” and many of his poems are written in the dialect of Indiana, but his reputation is national. His numerous poems were collected and published in ten volumes, as Complete Works, in 1916. For detailed bibliography, cf. Cambridge, III (IV), 651.
Studies and Reviews
Cambridge.
Pattee.
Atlan. 118 (’16): 503. (Nicholson.)
Bookm. 20 (’04): 18; 33 (’11): 67 (portrait); 35 (’12): 357 (portrait), 637; 38 (’13): 163 (portrait), 598; 44 (’16): 22 (portraits), 58, 79.
Cur Lit. 41 (’06): 160 (portrait); 57 (’14): 425 (portrait).
Cur. Op. 61 (’16): 196 (portrait).
J. Educ. 84 (’16): 149, 298.
Lit. Digest, 47 (’13): 782; 53 (’16): Aug. 1, pp. 304 (portrait), 408; 51 (’15): 730.
Nation, 97 (’13): 332.
No. Am. 204 (’16): 421.
Outlook, 111 (’15): 249, 273 (portrait), 396; 113 (’16): 778.
R. of Rs. 54 (’16): 327 (portrait).
World’s Work, 22 (’11): 14777 (portrait); 25 (’13): 565.
Yale R. n. s. 9 (’20): 395.
Charles George Douglas Roberts—novelist, poet, Nature writer.
Born at Douglas, New Brunswick, 1860. Studied at the University of New Brunswick, 1876. Has been a teacher, editor, soldier. In France during the War.
Major Roberts has published many volumes of poems, besides novels and animal stories.
For bibliography, see Who’s Who (English). For reviews, see Book Review Digest, 1914, 1916, 1919.
Edwin Arlington Robinson—poet.
Born at Head Tide, Maine, 1869. Educated at Gardiner, Maine, on the Kennebec River (“Tilbury Town”). Studied at Harvard, 1891-3. Struggled in various ways to make a living in New York, even working in the subway, while publishing his first poems. His Captain Craig, 1902, attracted the attention of Roosevelt, who gave the author a position in the New York Custom House, which he held 1905-10. Since then he has been able to give his entire time to poetry.
Suggestions for Reading
1. A good introduction to Mr. Robinson’s work is Miss Lowell’s review of his Collected Works, in the Dial, 72 (’22): 130. Although Miss Lowell’s contention that Mr. Robinson is our greatest living poet would be disputed by some critics, her article suggests many points of departure in the study of his very important contribution to American poetry.
2. Divide Mr. Robinson’s work into two groups: (1) poems of which the material is based upon literature; (2) those of which it comes from his own life experience. Is it possible to say now which of these two groups has the best chance of long endurance? Can you decide how far literature has had a good effect upon Mr. Robinson’s work, and how far it has lessened the value of his poetry?