The New Spirit.

THE continuity of literature is, happily, not a continuity of unvarying standards or unchanging ideals.

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth."

Literature is normally in a transitional state and there are no hard and fast chronological lines that separate the old from the new. Nevertheless there occur periods more or less clearly marked, in which one may trace the advent of new interests and the waning of old traditions. Such a period in the history of our literature may be recognized in both England and America. We characterize it as the passing of the Victorian Age; it is almost coincident with the end of the nineteenth century. In both countries the writers and thinkers who had dominated the thought of their age had passed and a new generation had arrived. The spirit of the age was changing. The Victorian attitude was complacent; it was largely influenced by the past. The new generation was more insistent in its questionings and protests, more independent of established conventions and unreserved in its utterance. In America the new spirit is felt in the poetry of Markham, Hovey, Moody, and Robinson, whose work began to appear just before the close of the century. In fiction we have to look a little later for the expression of the new ideals; and yet the eighties and the nineties produced some interesting achievements in both realism and romance; developed a perfected art in the short story; brought forth the best novels of W. D. Howells, Henry James, and Marion Crawford; and saw the first work of Mrs. Deland, Ellen Glasgow, Hamlin Garland, Robert Herrick, and Winston Churchill -- outstanding figures in the years that follow.

I. FICTION SINCE 1870.

To take adequate account of our later American fiction would require far more space than is available in this book. Hardly more than a list of the most prominent among our novelists can be included, with a partial classification of their work. Although it is in fiction that American writers are now most prolific and most successful, it is doubtful if many of these works will find a place in the literature which endures, or if any of these popular novelists will be long remembered. Two schools of fiction are represented: the realistic, and the romantic. It is not always easy to discriminate, however, and there are writers who have used the methods of both schools.

W. D. Howells, 1837-1920.

William Dean Howells, a consistent and uncompromising representative of the claims of realism, is recognized as easily the foremost American novelist of his generation. His father was a country editor; and it was in a printing-office in his native state of Ohio that Howells received his literary training. The publication, with John J. Piatt, of Poems of Two Friends (1860) marked the beginning of his career. A campaign Life of Lincoln in the same year secured his appointment as consul to Venice, a position which he held for four years. Venetian Life (1866) and Italian Journeys (1867) were the fruit of foreign residence.In 1866, Howells was made assistant editor (under James T. Fields) of the Atlantic Monthly; and from 1871 to 1881 he was the editor of the magazine. A vivacious novel, Their Wedding Journey (1871), added to the reputation already gained by the two Italian books, and this was increased by >A Chance Acquaintance (1873) and A Foregone Conclusion (1874). Mr. Howells is the author of more than thirty volumes, mainly works of fiction. Of these, A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884), Indian Summer (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889) have probably aroused widest interest. Howells's literary workmanship is deserving of the highest praise. He is minutely conscientious in his studies of character and incident, insisting upon careful observation and an honest report. His theory of literary art is set forth in an interesting essay, Criticism and Fiction (1891). After 1881, the novelist was associated editorally with various periodicals, including Harper's Magazine. While fiction predominates in his published writings, he also wrote a number of humorous parlor plays, several volumes of essays upon literary themes, and not a small amount of very charming verse. Henry James, 1843-1916.

Henry James, a native of New York, is properly denominated an American writer, although after 1869 he made his home in England. His novels are usually associated with those of Howells as exemplifying the best work of the American realists. In James's narratives we find the extreme application of realistic theory along with an analysis of character and motive wonderfully minute. His novels and short stories are psychological studies for the most part, and have a comparatively small audience among American readers. As the novelist was at one time fond of presenting studies of his countrymen as they sometimes appear in Europe, in the environment of a superior culture, his work often aroused protest rather than favor here. Such was the reception given to Daisy Miller (1878). Others of the novels which are eminently characteristic of this author are An International Episode (1879), The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Tragic Muse (1890), What Maisie Knew (1897), and The Ambassadors (1903). It is in the craftsmanship and structure of his narratives that James commands most general admiration; this artistic skill, along with his keen wit and general brilliance of style, may be most advantageously studied in some of the short stories, -- which constitute a large portion of his fiction, -- as, for example, in Terminations (1896) or The Private Life and Other Stories (1893).

Studies of Local Types.

Naturally the realistic novelists have, in the selection of material, frequently turned to the study of characters and manners with which their environment has made them well acquainted; there has therefore developed a large group of story-writers who deal with local types.

In New England.

Following the footsteps of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the delineation of the quiet New England life, Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) published the placid but impressive little story, Deep-haven, in 1877. Miss Jewett's work in this field has been sympathetic as well as accurate, and her novels have appealed strongly to the affections of many readers. Of these, A Country Doctor (1884), A Marsh Island (1885), and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) may be mentioned. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844-1911), born at Boston, became widely known by the publication of two mystical novels, The Gates Ajar (1868), and Men, Women, and Ghosts (1869). The daughter of a noted theologian and reared in the serious atmosphere of Andover, Mrs. Ward has given a distinctively religious coloring to her numerous works, of which The Story of Avis (1877), Beyond the Gates (1883), The Madonna of the Tubs (1886), Jack the Fisherman (1887), The Gates Between (1887), A Singular Life (1894), and The Supply at St. Agatha's (1896), are important examples. Margaretta Wade Deland (born in Pennsylvania, 1857), whose residence since 1880 has been at Boston, also touched the field of religious experience in her first novel, John Ward, Preacher, published in 1888. Sidney (1890), Philip and his Wife (1894), The Common Way (1904), The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906), and The Iron Woman (1911) are the most notable of her works. In Old Chester Tales (1898), Dr. Lavendar's People (1903), and Around Old Chester (1915), Mrs. Deland has produced a series of short stories that have unusual charm. Distinguished success in realistic portrayal of New England types is found in the work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (born in Massachusetts, 1862). Mrs. Freeman has portrayed with great skill and intense feeling the more subdued yet rugged phases of New England life and character. Her short stories are of exceptional strength and exhibit the technical methods of realism in perfection. A Humble Romance (1887), A New England Nun (1891), Jane Field (1892), Pembroke (1894), and Jerome (1897) are her principal novels. Alice Brown (born in New Hampshire, 1857) has been especially successful in her short stories, such as are gathered under the titles Meadow-Grass (1895), Tiverton Tales (1899), and The County Road (1906). Closely akin in local color to the work of Mrs. Freeman, these tales admit a little more of the brightness and warmth of the New England sunshine as it creeps among the shadows of humble circumstances. A later novel, The Story of Thyrza (1909), is a work of genuine creative power.

Romance and Idealistic Fiction.

There are other well-known writers of fiction who belong to New England, -- at least by birth, -- whose work does not permit of such definite classification as that of the group just considered; it is not concerned with the local type. Here belongs the name of Jane G. Austin (1831-1894), whose historical novels, Standish of Standish (1889), Betty Alden (1891), etc., deal with Old Colony times. Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921) is the author of numerous romantic tales beginning with Sir Rohan's Ghost (1859). Her more mature novels include Priscilla's Love Story (1898), The Maid He Married (1899), and The Great Procession (1902). Ellen Olney Kirk (born in Connecticut, 1842) published her first novel, Love in Idleness, in 1877. She has written a score of popular stories, including Through Winding Ways (1880), The Story of Margaret Kent (1886), Sons and Daughters (1887), The Apology of Ayliffe (1904), and Marcia (1907). Blanche Willis Howard (1847-1898), a native of Maine, became the wife of Dr. von Teuffel, of Stuttgart in Würtemberg, in 1890. She died at Munich. Her first story, One Summer, a delicate idyl, appeared in 1875; Guenn, a Breton Romance, in 1882. Clara Louise Burnham (born in Massachusetts, 1854) is the author of numerous works of fiction, beginning with No Gentlemen, in 1881. Among her novels, which deal largely with the teachings of Christian Science, the most successful are The Wise Woman (1895), The Right Princess (1902), Jewel (1903), The Opened Shutters (1906), and The Leaven of Love (1908). Arthur Sherburne Hardy (born in Massachusetts, 1847), a graduate of West Point and at one time professor of mathematics in Dartmouth College, has written novels of unusual charm and strength. These are But Yet a Woman (1883), The Wind of Destiny (1886), Passe Rose (1889), His Daughter First (1903), Aurélie (1912), Diane and Her Friends (1914). Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) is best known by two popular studies in political economy presented through the medium of romance: Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897). Robert Grant (born at Boston, 1852), a jurist, is well known as a writer of stimulating essays and an author of several successful novels. He has found American society a fruitful field for his realistic studies, of which the most prominent are: An Average Man (1883), The Carletons (1891), Unleavened Bread (1900), The Undercurrent (1904), and The Chippendales (1909). Frederic J. Stimson (born in Massachusetts, 1855), like Judge Grant, a representative of the legal profession, wrote his earlier novels under the pen-name "J. S. of Dale." Guerndale (1882), King Noanett (1896), and In Cure of Her Soul (1906) are representative works.

New York and Pennsylvania.

Silas Weir Mitchell (1830-1914), a distinguished Philadelphia physician, after several essays in fiction became famous with the publication of Hugh Wynne, in 1897. This was the beginning of a notable revival of interest in the historical novel dealing with the American Revolution. Another historical novel, The Adventures of François, appeared in 1898, and a third, The Red City, a picture of Washington's second administration, in 1908. Francis R. Stockton (1834-1902), a native of Philadelphia, best known, perhaps, as the author of The Lady or the Tiger (1884), is unique among American story-writers for the whimsical mingling of the serious and the humorous in fiction. His first notable work was Rudder Grange (1879), which one hardly knows whether to classify as a novel or as romance; but its very original vein of humor is delicious and runs through all of Stockton's succeeding work. Mrs. Amelia Edith Barr (1831-1919), born in England, after 1869 a resident of New York, was the prolific author of more than thirty works of fiction, including Jan Vedder's Wife (1885), The Black Shilling, The Bow of Orange Ribbon (1886), etc. Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (1848-1895), another successful American novelist not American born, was a native of Norway. After coming to this country, he filled professorships at Cornell and Columbia. Gunnar, a Norse Romance, his first novel, appeared in 1874. Edgar Fawcett (1847-1904), also a writer of verse, wrote novels depicting some phases of society in New York. Among these are An Ambitious Woman (1883), Social Silhouettes (1885), The House at High Bridge (1886). Brander Matthews (born at New Orleans, 1852), since 1892 a professor at Columbia, a well-known essayist and critic, has written realistic studies -- both novels and short stories -- of New York life; such are included in the volumes Vignettes of Manhattan (1894), His Father's Son (1895), and A Confident To-morrow (1899). Harold Frederic (1856-1898), a New York journalist and foreign correspondent at the time of his death, is best remembered by his strong, purposeful novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896). Kate Douglas Wiggin (1857-1923) published her first notable story, The Birds' Christmas Carol, in 1888, and The Story of Patsy in 1889. Of her subsequent stories Rebecca (1903) has, perhaps, had the largest success. Her popular character, Penelope, first appeared in Penelope's English Experiences (1893).

Mrs. Edith Wharton (born at New York, 1862) won a place of distinction based largely upon her intensely realistic novels, The House of Mirth (1905) and The Fruit of the Tree (1907). Owen Wister (born at Philadelphia, 1860) is known as the author of The Virginian (1902). Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916) was born at Philadelphia. A journalist and famed as a war correspondent, he was one of the most popular short-story writers of the day; the creator of "Gallagher" and "Van Bibber," and author of several popular romances, among which are The King's Jackal (1898), Soldiers of Fortune (1899), and The White Mice (1909). Robert W. Chambers (born at Brooklyn, 1865), who began as a writer of romantic tales, of which Lorraine (1896) and Cardigan (1901) are the best, later entered the realistic field, producing a series of hectic novels of metropolitan life, of which The Fighting Chance (1906), The Firing Line (1908), and The Danger Mark (1909) are examples. Paul Leicester Ford (1865-1902), author of The Honorable Peter Stirling (1894) and Janice Meredith (1899), and Stephen Crane (1871-1900), a young New York journalist, who wrote a remarkable realistic study of battle, The Red Badge of Courage (1896), were two young writers of promise whose work was interrupted by early death. David Graham Phillips (1867-1911) was born in Indiana but his literary career was in New York. His twenty novels, dealing seriously with ethical and social problems of the day, include The Great God, Success (1903), The Deluge (1905), The Second Generation (1907), and The Conflict (1911). Southern Story-Tellers.

The Southern States are well represented in the fiction which depicts local types of character, and have, besides, produced novelists of note whose work is more general in its scope.

In Georgia.

Similar to the work of some of the New England realists is that of Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-1898), whose novels and tales portray the picturesque manners prevailing in portions of his native state. Old Mark Langston (1883),The Primes and their Neighbors (1891), Pearce Amerson's Will, and Old Times in Middle Georgia (1897) are examples. Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), for twenty-five years editor of the Atlanta Constitution, worked in the same field. Balaam and his Master (1891), On the Plantation (1892), Stories of Georgia, The Story of Aaron, Tales of the Home Folks, are the titles of some of these volumes; but it is as "Uncle Remus," teller of tales concerning Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox, that this author is most widely known. Uncle Remus -- His Songs and his Sayings was published in 1880. Told by Uncle Remus appeared in 1905, and almost the last publication of this writer was a volume entitled Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit (1907). Virginia.

Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922) was the author of stories which have their scene in the Old Dominion. Among them are: In Ole Virginia (1887), Two Little Confederates (1888), Elsket (1892), Red Rock (1898), Gordon Keith (1903), Bred in the Bone and Other Stories (1904). Amélie Rives, Princess Troubetzkoy (born at Richmond, 1863), owes her literary reputation largely to her first novel, The Quick or the Dead, published in 1888.

Mary Johnston (born 1870) has written three historical romances dealing with old colony times in Virginia: Prisoners of Hope (1898), To Have and to Hold (1900), and Sir Mortimer (1904). In Lewis Rand (1908), Miss Johnston presents a picturesque study of political life at the opening of the nineteenth century. The Goddess of Reason (1907) is a drama on the theme of the French Revolution. Ellen A. G. Glasgow (born at Richmond, 1874) is the author of The Descendant (1897), The Deliverance (1904), The Wheel of Life (1906), The Romance of a Plain Man (1909), and The Miller of Old Church (1911) -- realistic novels of more than usual strength.

Kentucky.

James Lane Allen (born in Kentucky, 1849) is less of realist than idealist; the idyllic quality appears predominant in A Kentucky Cardinal (1894) and its sequel, Aftermath (1896). The Choir Invisible (1897) andThe Reign of Law (1900) are historical romances depicting early life in the state. A serious novel, The Mettle of the Pasture, appeared in 1909. More distinctive studies of local types are found in the realistic novels of John Fox, Jr. (1862-1919). A Mountain Europa (1894), Hell fer Sartain (1896), and The Kentuckians (1897) introduced Mr. Fox to readers of fiction. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1908), and The Heart of the Hills (1913) were equally popular. Tennessee.

Mary Noailles Murfree (born in Tennessee, 1850) for some years successfully concealed her identity under the pen-name "Charles Egbert Craddock." In the Tennessee Mountains (1884), The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain (1885), and In the Clouds (1886) began a series of strong and interesting tales of the mountain whites -- a class which Miss Murfree has continued to depict in her later works. Louisiana.

The touch of the romanticist is evident in the work of George Washington Cable (1844-1925). Although Mr. Cable was a resident of Massachusetts for many years, his stories belong to the southland. Old Creole Days (1879), The Grandissimes (1880), Madame Delphine (1881), Dr. Sevier (1885), and Bonaventure (1888) are representative works. Ruth McEnery Stuart (1856-1917) depicted with keen sense of humor some phases of Southern life, both white and black. A Golden Wedding and Other Tales appeared in 1893; Carlotta's Intended and The Story of Babette (1894) were followed by Sonny (1896), a unique and fascinating character study. The reconstructed negro appears in the later creations of Napoleon Jackson (1902) and George Washington Jones (1903). The River's Children (1904) is a genuine idyl of the Mississippi. Grace Elizabeth King (born at New Orleans, 1852) has written of the Creoles in Monsieur Motte (1888), Tales of Time and Place (1892), and Balcony Stories (1893).

Fiction of Broader Scope.

Frances Hodgson Burnett (born in England, 1849) removed to the United States in 1865, residing for ten years in Tennessee, and then for a period in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Burnett's first novels, That Lass o' Lowrie's (1877) and Haworth's (1879), portray life among the working people of Lancashire. Her Through One Administration (1883) deals with official society life in Washington. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) was an exceedingly popular juvenile, which was followed by others almost as successful. Mrs. Burnett, who died in 1924, lived of late years in England. A Lady of Quality appeared in 1896, The Shuttle, in 1907, T. Tembarom, in 1913.

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909), most cosmopolitan of American writers, both in residence and in the material utilized in his novels, was also one of the most productive of our novelists. He was the son of the sculptor, Thomas C. Crawford, and was born in Italy. His education was attained at St. Paul's School, in Concord, New Hampshire, at Trinity College, Cambridge, at Heidelberg, and Rome. During 1879 and 1880, he engaged in editorial work in India. Although his residence was for the rest of his life in Italy, he remained strongly patriotic in his sentiment toward the United States, regarding it as his country and asserting himself always an American. His first novel, Mr. Isaacs, appeared in 1882, and was followed by Dr. Claudius (1883), A Roman Singer (1884), Zoroaster (1885), and A Tale of a Lonely Parish (1886). The variety of sources from which Mr. Crawford drew his material is strikingly suggested in the titles of his representative novels, of which the following may be mentioned: Paul Patoff (1887), Saracinesca (1887), Greifenstein (1889), Khaled (1891), Pietro Ghisleri (1893), Katherine Lauderdale (1894), In the Palace of the King (1900), A Lady of Rome (1906), Arethusa (1907). He was the author of more than forty books, including important studies of Italian history and several plays. Of his novels it is conceded that those depicting Italian life and character are the most valuable; and of these, three, constituting the Saracinesca series, are the best. Mr. Crawford died at his villa in Sorrento, at the age of fifty-five.

Gertrude Franklin Atherton (born 1859), a Californian by birth, has lived a cosmopolitan life here and abroad. Her early novels were written in the nineties; of her later works The Aristocrats (1901), The Conqueror (1902), Ancestors (1907), and The Tower of Ivory (1910) are prominent.

Perhaps the best known of our writers from the South is Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915), a native of Baltimore. A versatile master of several arts, including the substantial one of building lighthouses, his first success in fiction was the fine character sketch, Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891). Tom Grogan (1896), Caleb West (1898), and The Tides of Barnegat (1906) are all realistic studies of the people whom the author may have known when living the practical business life of a building contractor and mechanical engineer. The Fortunes of Oliver Horne (1902) is said to be reminiscent of that period in Mr. Smith's life when he was an art student in New York. His later stories, The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman (1907) and Peter (1908), indicate a return to the more sentimental manner of his earliest success. Albion W. Tourgée (1838-1905), a native of Ohio and an officer in the Union army throughout the Civil War, lived in North Carolina from 1865 to 1881, and during this period wrote three or four novels dealing with political conditions in the South. Of these, A Fool's Errand (1879) and Bricks Without Straw (1880) aroused widespread interest. Tourgée afterward served as United States Consul at Bordeaux and at Halifax, and was the author of numerous stories and novels. Winston Churchill (born at St. Louis, 1871) has taken a conspicuous place among writers of historical romance with his impressive series dealing with great epochs in American history: Richard Carvel (1899), The Crisis (1901), and The Crossing (1904). To these novels must be added his first story, The Celebrity (1898), and his later novels: Coniston (1906), Mr. Crewe's Career (1908), A Modern Chronicle (1910), The Inside of the Cup (1913), and A Far Country (1915).

The Indiana Novelists.

The promise of the West as a field for the writer of fiction came with the publication of The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871). This book was a realistic study of character in southern Indiana of the early fifties. Its author, Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), was born in the pioneer days of the state at the little town of Vevay, on the Ohio River. He entered the ministry of the Methodist Church, and became what was then known as a "circuit rider," ministering to a parish which required a four weeks' itinerary, involving both hardship and peril. In six months his health broke down, and he removed to Minnesota. In 1886, he engaged in editorial work at Chicago, and in 1874 became pastor of a church in Brooklyn, New York, to which he gave the name of the Church of Christian Endeavor. The Hoosier Schoolmaster met with wide popularity and was translated into several languages. It was followed by The Mystery of Metropolisville (1873), with its setting in Minnesota, and The Circuit Rider (1874), the scene of which is laid in Ohio. Roxy (1878) and The Graysons (1887) are again portrayals of Hoosier types.

The state of Indiana has made a remarkable record in the literary history of the middle West. Lew Wallace (1827-1905), the author of Ben Hur, was a native of the state and made his home at Crawfordsville, the "Hoosier Athens." He served in the Mexican War, and later in the Civil War, receiving the rank of Major-General, for gallantry in the field. His first romance, The Fair God (1873), was an Aztec story, the inspiration of which came from the reading of Prescott's histories. Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ (1880) was the result of a conscientious study of the foundations of the Christian faith. The author's treatment of his difficult subject is scholarly and reverent. The popularity of the work has fairly rivaled that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. General Wallace was appointed governor of New Mexico in 1878; and it was while living at Santa Fé that he wrote the larger part of the romance. A later story, The Prince of India (1893), was an outcome of Wallace's residence at Constantinople as minister to Turkey.

Maurice Thompson (1844-1901), also a resident of Crawfordsville, has been mentioned already as a writer of verse. He was a novelist as well, the author of several popular stories, of which A Tallahasse Girl (1882) and Alice of Old Vincennes (1900) are noteworthy. Among more recent writers who have added to the literary reputation of the Hoosier state are: Newton Booth Tarkington (born 1869), author of The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), The Two Vanrevels (1902), Cherry (1903), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), The Turmoil (1915), together with the Penrod stories and Seventeen; Charles Major (1856-1913), whose very popular romance, When Knighthood was in Flower, appeared in 1898; Meredith Nicholson (born 1866), author of several romantic narratives of which The House of a Thousand Candles (1905) and The Port of Missing Men (1907) are prominent; and George Barr McCutcheon (born 1866), whose Graustark (1900), Craneycrow (1902), and Beverly of Graustark (1904) are best known. Here also should be included the name of the versatile humorist George Ade (born 1866), whose first literary successes, Artie, Pink Marsh, Doc Horne, etc., were produced while Mr. Ade was writing on the staff of a Chicago newspaper (1890-1900).

The West in General.

Captain Charles King (born at Albany, New York, 1844), a retired army officer, residing in Milwaukee, is the author of a long list of tales, the material of which is mainly drawn from military life. These include The Colonel's Daughter (1883), The Deserter (1887), Captain Blake (1892), The General's Double (1897), and many more. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1848-1894), a descendant of James Fenimore Cooper, was born in New Hampshire, but her home in later life was at Cleveland, Ohio. Her summers were usually spent on the shores of Lake Superior, or at Mackinac; she resided also in Florida. Her principal novels are: Castle Nowhere (1875), Anne (1882), East Angels (1886), and Jupiter Lights (1889). Mary Hallock Foote (born in New York, 1847) lived for some years in Colorado, California, and Idaho, accompanying her husband, a civil engineer. Her most successful novels deal realistically with the life of the mining camp and the hills. These are The Led Horse Claim (1883), John Bodewin's Testimony (1886), and Coeur d' Alène (1894).

Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902), a native of Ohio, later a resident of Illinois, was the author of several interesting historical novels for the most part concerned with historic epochs in the region of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and in the valleys of the Mississippi and the Illinois. It was The Romance of Dollard (1889) which began the series of her works -- a series which owed its inception to the fascinating narratives of Francis Parkman. Old Kaskaskia (1893) and The White Islander (1893), The Lady of Fort St. John (1892) and The Little Renault (1897) are vigorous narratives of romantic adventure. Mrs. Catherwood's last work, Lazarre (1901), is based on the tradition which identifies the Dauphin of France, who disappeared mysteriously from Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, with a lad in America who went by the name of Eleazar Williams and was reputed of royal birth.

Alice French, "Octave Thanet" (born in Massachusetts, 1850), is a resident of Davenport, Iowa. A part of the year she makes her home in a quiet spot in Arkansas. Both places serve as setting in some of her stories. Miss French is a realist; the relations between labor and capital have proved interesting and effective material in her hands. Among her works are: Knitters in the Sun (1887), Expiation (1890), Otto the Knight (1893), Stories of a Western Town (1893), The Heart of Toil (1898), The Man of the Hour (1905), The Lion's Share (1907), By Inheritance (1910), and A Step on the Stair (1913).

A Chicago group.

Henry Blake Fuller (born at Chicago, 1857) has ably represented the western metropolis in modern fiction. Beginning his literary career with two fantastic romances, The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani (1891) and The Chatelaine of La Trinité, Mr. Fuller (1892) next appeared as a realistic novelist of keen vision and serious purpose. He portrayed some interesting phases of Chicago society in The Cliff Dwellers (1893), and With the Procession (1895). The Last Refuge (1901) is in line with his earlier volumes, romantic, whimsical, and strongly symbolistic.

Hamlin Garland (born 1860), although a resident in the East, closely identified with Chicago, is a realist in principle, although some of his more recent work is softened by touches of romanticism. Mr. Garland's first publication, Main Travelled Roads (1890), was a volume of short stories realistic and somewhat cynical in tone. Jason Edwards (1891), A Little Norsk (1891), A Spoil of Office (1892), A Member of the Third House (1892), and Rose of Dutcher's Coolly (1895) followed in similar vein. The Eagle's Heart (1900), Her Mountain Lover (1901), The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop (1902), and Hesper (1903) are all stories of the rugged, unconventional life of mountain, mine, and camp, in which romance blends with realism. A Son of the Middle Border (1917) and A Daughter of the Middle Border (1921) are reminiscent of the author's own boyhood in Wisconsin and of his literary career East and West.

Will Payne (born in Illinois, 1865), since 1890 a Chicago journalist and for several years editor of The Economist, is the author of numerous short stories and of several novels. Jerry the Dreamer was published in 1896, The Story of Eva in 1901. Two of Mr. Payne's realistic novels, The Money Captain (1898) and Mr. Salt (1903), are distinctively studies of commercial life and admirable essays in this field.

Robert Herrick (born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1868), a Harvard man and, since 1893, a member of the Faculty in the University of Chicago, holds a leading place among the realists. Like Mr. Fuller, he has been impressed by certain phases of American social life and has written somewhat sombre but carefully studied narratives which have their setting in the great city of the middle West. These include The Gospel of Freedom (1898), The Web of Life (1900), The Common Lot (1904), Together (1908), A Life for a Life (1910), One Woman's Life (1913), and His Great Adventure (1913).

One of the youngest and one of the most promising in this group of western realists, Frank Norris (1870-1902), was born at Chicago, but part of his life was spent on the Pacific coast and another portion of it in New York. He was a journalist and served as war correspondent in South Africa and Cuba. At the time of his death he was a resident in California. His claim to distinction is found in a projected series of three novels planned to embody his great idea, -- what he called the epic of the wheat. The Octopus (1901) is the first of the series and deals with the planting and harvesting of the crop; its scene is laid in southern California. The Pit (1903) pictures the selling of the wheat, and dramatically portrays the life which centres in the Chicago Board of Trade. The last book of the trilogy was to have dealt with the distribution of the wheat in Europe, and would have been entitled The Wolf, as symbolizing the experiences of famine in Russia. Although uncompleted, the large conception of this young enthusiast is worthy of more than passing note. In his realism Frank Norris was a disciple of the French novelist, Zola. Theodore Dreiser (born 1871), a native of Indiana, has frankly followed the same model. Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Titan (1914), and The Genius (1915) are representative works.

Realism of a cruder and more primitive type is found in the narratives of Jack London (1876-1916), Californian, whose roving life and love of adventure are reflected in The Son of the Wolf (1900), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), and Burning Daylight (1910).

The Short Story.

Attention has been called to the prominence attained by the short story as a well-defined and important development in American fiction. While most of our many writers of short stories have also done notable work as novelists and are included in the list already named, at least two are conspicuous as authors who never wrote novels at all. These are Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), and O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1867-1910). Ambrose Bierce, a Californian, wrote romantic tales of the grotesque and weird type created by Poe. They appeared in periodicals, were collected and published in three volumes: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1892), The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (1892), and Can Such Things Be? (1895). Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in North Carolina, and, after a roving life, emerged in New York in 1902 and became identified with the city -- not only as resident, but as a keen observer and interpreter of its picturesque and varied types. The stories of O. Henry, immensely popular but over-rated, doubtless, from the point of view of literary art, were published in a collected edition of twelve volumes (Doubleday, 1912).

Over the Threshold.

With the passing of twenty years, the majority of the novelists whose work was current at the incoming of the century have passed from the stage, but not all. The Pulitzer prize, awarded annually by a competent committee in New York City for the best American novel of the year, was accorded in 1919 to Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and in 1921 to his Alice Adams. In 1920 it was given to Mrs. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Mrs. Deland's vigorous novel, The Vehement Flame, Mrs. Ellen Glasgow's One Man in His Time, and Old Crow, by Alice Brown, were among the books of 1922.

The New-Comers.

Meanwhile new writers have found their place in the modern group. Among these the more notable are: Mary Roberts Rinehart, author of The Circular Staircase (1908), The Man in Lower Ten (1909), Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), The Amazing Interlude (1917) -- a war novel, and many entertaining stories; Willa Siebert Cather (born 1875), whose Nebraska novels, O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia (1918), are admirable; Dorothy Canfield Fisher (born 1879), author of The Squirrel Cage (1912), The Bent Twig (1915), and The Brimming Cup (1921); Henry Kitchell Webster (born 1875), whose earlier material was drawn from the drama of commercial life, but whose later work, represented by Real Life (1920) and Mary Wollaston (1920), is eminently modern; Will Levington Comfort (born 1878), a writer of tales of adventure like Routledge Rides Alone (1910), and others with a more serious purpose, like She Buildeth Her House (1911), Fate Knocks at the Door (1912), and Down Among Men (1913); James Branch Cabell (born 1879), whose art is at its best in The Line of Love (1905, 1921), The Cream of the Jest (1917), and Domnei (1920); Ernest Poole (born 1880), author of the The Harbor (1915), His Family (1917), His Second Wife (1918), and Blind (1920); Henry Sydnor Harrison (born 1880), author of Queed (1911), V. V.'s Eyes (1913), and Saint Teresa (1922); Joseph Hergesheimer (born 1880), whose impressive story of The Three Black Pennys (1917) was followed by the novel, Java Head, in 1919; and Sinclair Lewis (born 1885), whose Main Street (1920) presents a realistic study of "small town" life and character.

Gene Stratton Porter (1868-1925) and Harold Bell Wright (born 1872) have a place in popular esteem somewhat out of proportion to the literary merit of their work. Mrs. Porter, whose home was in Indiana, a naturalist especially interested in bird life, wrote A Girl of the Limberlost in 1909; subsequent novels, The Harvester (1911), Laddie (1913), and others have had an extended popularity. Harold Bell Wright, for ten years a pastor of the Disciples (Christian Church) in Missouri and Kansas, like his early prototype, Rev. E.P. Roe (1838-88), retired from the ministry and began a career as a novelist. He had already laid the foundations of his later success with That Printer of Udell's (1903) and The Shepherd of the Hills (1907). The Calling of Dan Matthews (1909) and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1911), together with later volumes, have numbered their readers by thousands.

Books of Reference.

Further information about our novelists and excellent criticism of their work will be found in A History of American Literature Since 1870, by Fred Lewis Pattee (Century Co., 1915) and in The American Novel and Contemporary American Novelists 1900-1920, by Carl Van Doren (Macmillan, 1921, 1922). Some American Story Tellers, by Frederic Taber Cooper (Holt, 1911) and American Short Story Writers, by Blanche Colton Williams (Moffat, Yard, 1920) are also helpful.