life, James Hall (1793-1868) wrote of the then far West. Born in
Philadelphia, Hall saw service in the War of 1812, and in 1820 went
to Illinois and engaged in law and newspaper work. His “Sketches of
History, Life, and Manners in the West” (1835) and several later
volumes of tales are characterised by a natural and easy style, much
skill in narrative, and general fidelity to detail. The distinction
of writing the first of the army of anti-slavery novels belongs
to the historian Richard Hildreth (1807-65). “Archy Moore” (1837)
was republished in England, being reviewed by _The Spectator_ and
other papers. A rather extravagant narrative, it purports to be the
autobiography of a Virginia slave during the War of 1812. A second
edition with a continuation was published in 1852 as “The White Slave.”
Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-84), after studying at Columbia College
and preparing for the bar, practised law for three years in New York,
then abandoned it for journalism and literature. He was the founder of
_The Knickerbocker Magazine_, associated later, for many years, with
the name of its editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, and was connected with
various other periodicals. His two novels, “Greyslaer” (1840), founded
on the celebrated Beauchamp murder case in Kentucky,--a novel of
intense interest which reminds some readers of Cooper,--and “Vanderlyn”
(published serially in _The American Monthly Magazine_ in 1837), like
his other writings, reflect a generous and refined character. His
promising career was cut short in 1849 by insanity.
_William Ware._--In March, 1836, there appeared in _The Knickerbocker
Magazine_ the first of a series of “Letters from Palmyra,” which
aroused much interest. They purported to be written by a young Roman
noble who visited Palmyra in the reign of Zenobia. They vividly
presented the everyday life of the Roman Empire and at once gave their
author high rank as a classical scholar. William Ware (1797-1852)
graduated from Harvard College in 1816 and became a Unitarian
clergyman; for some years he edited _The Christian Examiner_. The
“Letters from Palmyra” were published in book form in 1837; the book
is now called “Zenobia,” from the title of the English reprint. It was
followed in 1838 by a sequel, “Probus,” in which the last persecution
of Roman Christians is ably and energetically described. The title
of this book was afterward changed to “Aurelian.” His third novel,
“Julian, or Scenes in Judea” (1841), narrated many episodes in the life
of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucifixion forming a powerful climax to the
story.
_Mathews and Briggs._--A highly imaginative and somewhat absurd romance
entitled “Behemoth, a Legend of the Mound-Builders” (1839) was the work
of Cornelius Mathews (1817-89), a New York dramatist and magazine
writer. His “Career of Puffer Hopkins” (1841) set forth some phases of
contemporary political life; it first appeared serially in _Arcturus_,
which Mathews edited in 1840-42. Another novel of his was “Moneypenny,
or The Heart of the World” (1850), a story of city and country life.
All of Mathews’ stories, however, have a journalistic flavour. In the
same year with Mathews, Charles Frederick Briggs (1840-77), a New York
journalist, entered the ranks of the novelists with his “Adventures of
Harry Franco, a Tale of the Great Panic” (1839), following it with “The
Haunted Merchant” (1843) and “The Trippings of Tom Pepper” (1847). All
of his novels have a certain value as humorous pictures of New York
City life; through them runs a vein of amusing satire. Briggs was later
the first editor of _Putnam’s Monthly_.
_Henry W. Longfellow._--It was in 1839 also that Longfellow published
his once popular “Hyperion, a Romance,” in which, in connection with
a pathetic love story, he mainly sought, in the style of Richter, to
convey his romantic impressions of the life and traditions of the
Old World. The volume is charged, if not surcharged, with sentiment.
Paul Flemming’s enthusiasm for the quaint and picturesque in European
lore and scenery takes us back to the days when Continental Europe
was for Americans a land of romance, and when visits to the Old World
were still not accomplished without difficulty and had not lost their
novelty. Of a wholly different texture is the only other prose tale
written by Longfellow, “Kavanagh, a Tale,” which appeared in 1849 and
which probably suffered by coming so near the romantic and fascinating
“Evangeline.” It is a bookish and uneventful story of New England
life; Hawthorne said of it, “Nobody but yourself would dare to write
so quiet a book.” Yet it is written in a characteristically graceful
style, and shows that the scholar-poet was a good observer of the life
around him, though he could not give that life an air of reality in his
portraiture.
_John Lothrop Motley._--The fame of Motley’s historical work has
obscured the reputation of his fiction. “Morton’s Hope, or The Memoirs
of a Provincial” (1839), like “Hyperion,” recalls the interest in
German university life which was becoming general in America--a life
which Motley vividly describes. From Germany the hero returns to
participate in the American Revolution, in which he distinguishes
himself. In “Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony”
(1849), Motley utilised the story of Thomas Morton, the jolly Royalist
who with his followers settled near Boston in 1626 and whose revelry
shocked his staid Puritan neighbours. As a historical picture, it
has high value. Both of these novels, abounding in carefully wrought
descriptions and gleams of genuine humour, deserved greater success
than they had.
_Caroline M. Kirkland._--A similar service was done for life in
Michigan by Caroline M. Kirkland (1801-64), whose humorous and lively
descriptions of frontier life, “A New Home; Who’ll Follow?” (1839),
“Forest Life” (1842), and “Western Clearings” (1846), were in their
day successful and popular. Mrs. Kirkland’s early works were published
over the pen-name of “Mrs. Mary Clavers.” Her literary career extended
over a quarter of a century, and she was long a popular contributor to
magazines and annuals.
=The Forties.=--The decade of 1840-50 saw the advent of no writers
of enduring reputation. “Charles Elwood, or The Infidel Converted”
(1840), a kind of philosophical autobiography by Orestes A. Brownson
(1803-76), is really an essay in the guise of a novel, and can here
only be mentioned. Brownson was successively a Presbyterian, a
Universalist, a Unitarian, and a Roman Catholic; as a thinker, he might
be called a Christian Socialist. Epes Sargent (1813-80), a student
at Harvard College, who became a journalist and a popular dramatist,
was the author of several juveniles, two of which, “Wealth and Worth”
(1840) and “What’s to be Done?” (1841), had a large sale; and of two
now forgotten novels, “Fleetwood, or The Stain of Birth” (1845) and
“Peculiar, a Tale of the Great Transition” (1864), a story of changes
in the South in the Civil War. Washington Allston’s “Monaldi” (1841),
an Italian romance with an Othello-like _motif_, really belongs to an
earlier generation, having been written as early as 1821, and intended
apparently for publication in Dana’s _Idle Man_. It is a powerful but
harrowing story in which the progress of jealousy is traced throughout
its course. Maria J. McIntosh (1803-78), losing her fortune in the
panic of 1837, adopted authorship as a means of support and wrote a
number of juveniles, the first of which was “Blind Alice” (1841), and
all of which were intended to illustrate the moral sentiments. Some of
her stories were reprinted in London; and she continued to write for
more than twenty years. Maria Brooks (1795-1845), a once highly praised
but now forgotten poet, in 1843 privately printed a prose romance,
“Idomen, or The Vale of Yumuri,” which was really an autobiography,
including much poetical description and reflection.
_Sylvester Judd._--The most successful picture of old New England
life ever written, down to the time of its publication (1845), was
“Margaret, a Tale of the Real and Ideal.” It was this book which
Lowell, in his “Fable for Critics,” spoke of as
the first Yankee book
With the _soul_ of Down East in ’t, and things farther East,
As far as the threshold of morning, at least,
Where awaits the fair dawn of the simple and true,
Of the day that comes slowly to make all things new.
The author, Sylvester Judd (1813-53), was a native of Massachusetts and
a graduate of Yale College, who had become a Unitarian clergyman and
settled in Augusta, Maine; and his purpose in writing was “to promote
the cause of liberal Christianity.” Had he kept this purpose more in
the background, his place among the greater novelists would have been
sure; for he had observed closely every phase of Puritan life and
possessed rare gifts of realistic and dramatic story-telling. Not only
does he correctly describe the externals of New England places and
people, down to the niceties of dialect; but he also interprets with
rare and poetic insight the moral and spiritual conflicts into which
his characters are drawn. Another novel similar to “Margaret,” “Richard
Edney and the Governor’s Family,” appeared in 1850; it deals with the
career of a New England country youth. Like Margaret, the hero has
altogether too many “experiences”--introduced in order to point the
moral. Yet on the whole the realism of these novels is wholesome and
fresh and true.
_Herman Melville._--A follower of Cooper--though at some distance in
point of quality--in writing stories of the sea, was Herman Melville
(1819-91). A native of New York, he spent the greater part of the years
1837-44 in voyages to the Pacific. Of his observations and exciting
experiences he made good use in a long series of tales, the first of
which, “Typee” (1846), narrated his adventures in the Marquesas. The
general perception of the growing importance of the Pacific doubtless
aided in securing for Melville’s stories the most favourable reception,
both in America and in England. “Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in
the South Seas” (1847) continued the earlier story, with no less vivid
pictures of sailor life, fights with savages, and thrilling escapes.
His next story, “Mardi, and a Voyage Thither” (1849), was an attempt
at a philosophical romance contrasting European civilisation and
Polynesian savagery, and, though it contained some able descriptions,
its vagaries and lack of sobriety doomed it to failure. “Redburn, His
First Voyage” (1849) tells of a journey to England, and includes some
realistic horrors; it could hardly be popular. “The White Jacket,
or The World in a Man-of-War” (1850) is a photographic narrative of
experiences on board a United States frigate. Melville’s masterpiece
was “Moby Dick, or The Whale” (1851); though an uneven work of
excessive length, written partly in a strained, Carlylesque style, it
nevertheless fills the reader with the fascination of the sea. The
fierce contest of Captain Ahab with the great whale, which “becomes a
representative of moral evil in the world,” is not unworthy of the pen
of a greater writer. Melville never afterward came up to the standard
of this work, though he wrote several other stories and novels, among
them “Pierre, or The Ambiguities” (1852), “Israel Potter” (1855),
narrating the adventures of a Revolutionary soldier, and praised by
Hawthorne for its portraits of Paul Jones and Benjamin Franklin, “The
Piazza Tales” (1856), and “The Confidence Man” (1857).
_Mrs. Judson and Others._--Mrs. Emily Chubbuck Judson (1817-54), third
wife of the celebrated Baptist missionary Dr. Adoniram Judson, and best
known by her pen name of “Fanny Forester,” in her “Alderbrook” (1846),
a collection of village sketches, described girl life in New England,
winning a reputation which lasted for many years. Peter Hamilton Myers
(1812-78), a Brooklyn lawyer, was for a brief time remembered for
his historical romances, “The First of the Knickerbockers, a Tale of
1673” (1848), “The Young Patroon, or Christmas in 1690” (1849), “The
King of the Hurons” (1849), and “The Prisoner of the Border, a Tale of
1838” (1857). Charles Wilkins Webber (1819-56), the son of a Kentucky
physician, inherited from his mother a fondness for out-of-door life,
and spent some years in Texas. Then he tried in succession medicine,
theology, and authorship. His stories and descriptions of South-western
life and adventure include “Old Hicks the Guide” (1848), “The Hunter
Naturalist” (1851-53), illustrated by his wife, “Tales of the Southern
Border” (1852), and “Shot in the Eye” (1853), his best story. He died
in the battle of Rivas, in Central America.
_Mayo_, _Kimball_, _and Wise_.--William Starbuck Mayo (1812-95), a
New York physician, travelled in the Barbary States, and on returning
home wrote two popular novels, “Kaloolah, or Journeyings in the Djebel
Kumri” (1849) and “The Berber, or The Mountaineer of the Atlas”
(1850). The former purports to be the autobiography of Jonathan
Romer, who, after numerous exciting adventures in the American woods,
goes to Africa, has various hair’s-breadth escapes, fights with
slave-traders and natives, and marries a beautiful dusky princess. In
its satirical remarks on civilised usages it imitates “Gulliver.” “The
Berber,” a story of more regular construction, is still enjoyable.
It recounts events supposed to take place in Africa at the close of
the seventeenth century, and like its predecessor contains minutely
accurate descriptions of tropical scenery and animal life. Richard
B. Kimball’s “St. Leger, or The Threads of Life” (1849), reprinted
from _The Knickerbocker_, was a serious attempt to depict a mind in
pursuit of truth in a story in which romantic adventure plays some
part; but the characters are not strongly marked. Henry Augustus
Wise (1819-69), son of a naval officer and himself a lieutenant in
the Navy, saw the humorous and comic side of the seaman’s life, and
chronicled his impressions in “Los Gringos, or An Inside View of Mexico
and California” (1849), and still more successfully in his sprightly
and sentimental “Tales for the Marines” (1855), in which all sorts of
marvellous and amusing things happen.
=The Decade of 1850-60.=--It can hardly be said that the next decade,
1850-60, saw any great improvement in the quality of our fiction; but
there is evident an increasing preference for realistic studies of home
life, and a growing indifference to the highly wrought and more or less
melodramatic romances which had delighted the readers of an earlier
day. For many reasons, Americans desired to see themselves in fiction,
doing their daily work, struggling with everyday temptations, yielding
or conquering according to their native strength or weakness. There was
a growing sense of the artistic--and moral or didactic--value of common
life. The reaction against romance was inevitable, and was no doubt
accelerated by the coming of railroads, telegraphs, Atlantic cables,
and the controversy over slavery.
_Ik Marvel._--Significant, then, was the popularity, which has scarcely
waned, of “Ik Marvel’s” two books, “Reveries of a Bachelor” (1850) and
“Dream Life” (1851). The author, Donald G. Mitchell (born in 1822),
was a product of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, whose experience
had been enriched by European travel. The pernicious influence of
Carlyle upon Mitchell’s style is too evident; but the sentiment, or
sentimentality, the enthusiasm, the tender pathos of these slight
stories have appealed to thousands. In his “Dr. Johns” (1866), Mitchell
brought the stern Calvinistic theology of New England into relief by
contrasting it with French frivolity.
_Edward Everett Hale._--Edward Everett Hale’s literary activity has
extended over something like sixty years. Born in Boston in 1822,
and graduated from Harvard at seventeen, he became a journalist,
story-teller, minister, historian, and antiquarian. His “Margaret
Percival in America,” a religious novel, appeared in 1850, and he has
since written others, “If, Yes, and Perhaps” (1868), “Ten Times One
Is Ten” (1870), “In His Name” (1874), a truthful and glowing narrative
of the Waldenses, “Philip Nolan’s Friends” (1876), the gallant hero of
which, the Kentuckian Philip Nolan, was “the protomartyr to Mexican
treachery,” “The Fortunes of Rachel” (1884), a slight but clever tale,
and “East and West” (1892). But Dr. Hale is best known in literature by
his short stories. “My Double and How He Undid Me,” published in _The
Atlantic_ for September, 1859, was a clever and amusing piece which
made a great hit and immortalised some of the bores of his parish. “The
Man Without a Country” (_The Atlantic_, December, 1863) brought its
author national reputation and has become a classic. It has been justly
pronounced “the best sermon on patriotism ever written.” Speaking of
sermons recalls the criticism often applied to Dr. Hale’s stories, that
the moral is too obvious; in general, however, the moral cannot be
called obtrusive and hardly interferes with the general effect of the
story.
_Alice Cary._--Alice Cary (1822-71), better known as a poet, wrote
pleasantly appreciative sketches of her Ohio home under the title of
“Clovernook, or Recollections of our Neighbourhood in the West” (1852);
a second series of similar sketches was published in 1853. Her three
novels, “Hagar” (1852), “Married, not Mated” (1856), and “The Bishop’s
Son” (1857), were characterised by power of observation and by careful
literary workmanship.
_The Warners._--Susan Warner (1819-1885), whose earlier work was done
under the pen name of “Elizabeth Wetherell,” became well known through
the publication (1850) of her first book “The Wide, Wide World.” This
was a story of domestic life on the upper Hudson, which showed an
exceptional power of description and of character study, and which
secured very promptly wide acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic.
With the single exception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it proved to be the
most popular novel written up to that date in America, and it had the
compliment of reproduction in a long series of unauthorised editions
in Europe. “The Wide, Wide World” was followed by a series of stories,
of which the most important were “Queechy” (1852), “The Hills of the
Shatemuc” (1858), “Diana” (1859), “Wych Hazel” (1860), and “The Gold
of Chickaree” (1861). She collaborated with her sister, Anna Bartlett
Warner (born in 1820), in the production of “Dollars and Cents,” which
was issued in 1853, and in some successful books for the young, “Mr.
Rutherford’s Children,” etc.
_Harriet Beecher Stowe._--A diligent and painstaking writer of fiction
for thirty years, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96) is to-day remembered
only as the author of a single book, and that one almost her first.
The daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher of Connecticut, she was born into
a remarkably gifted family and inherited the best that New England
Puritan culture could give. At twenty-one she was married to Professor
Calvin E. Stowe, then a teacher in the divinity school in Cincinnati.
Here she had an opportunity of studying the workings of slavery, and
as a result entered heart and soul into the anti-slavery movement.
In the year in which Hawthorne published his “House of the Seven
Gables,” Longfellow “The Golden Legend,” and Melville “Moby Dick,” she
began in _The National Era_ a serial which aroused wide and bitter
discussion. The next year (1852), “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared in book
form. Over three hundred thousand copies, according to the author,
were sold within a year. The part played by the book in hastening the
“irrepressible conflict” of the Civil War cannot be estimated. It is
not hard to see blemishes in the story: tame description, careless and
loose construction, the tone of the preacher; but these are rendered
insignificant by the great merits of the book, its frequent touches
of humour, its range and variety of characters, who are not merely
types but are graphically individualised, its broad humanity, its
fierce earnestness, its kindling emotion. These may not suffice to put
the story among the great and enduring works of literature; but it
will be long before America outgrows her fondness and admiration for
it. Mrs. Stowe followed this book in 1856 with “Dred” (republished in
1866 as “Nina Gordon”), in which she continued to depict effectively
the position of slavery with reference to the church and the law, and
the defeat by mob violence of a high-minded slave-owner who sought to
purify the unholy system. A more deliberate and carefully planned work
than “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it has generally been considered as inferior
in power, though Harriet Martineau thought it superior. Old Tiff is
one of the great creations of negro character. As a picture, in the
main true, of old-fashioned Southern life, it has a lasting charm.
In “The Minister’s Wooing” (1859), Mrs. Stowe turned to New England
life at the beginning of the century, and dealt with the influence
of the older Calvinism upon devout and sensitive minds. In artistic
construction and effect it has been pronounced superior to all her
other works; some of the characters, for example, Mary Scudder and Dr.
Hopkins, are notably strong and impressive. Yet, like all her later
works, it has been overshadowed by that one which was struck out in a
white heat of passionate appeal. “The Pearl of Orr’s Island” (1861)
is a quiet story of Puritan life on the Maine coast, insufficiently
relieved by a few thrilling episodes. In “Agnes of Sorrento” (1862),
the result of a visit to Europe, Mrs. Stowe turned to Italy in the days
of Savonarola, but achieved even less success than George Eliot did in
the next year with “Romola.” In 1863, the Stowes settled permanently
at Hartford, Connecticut; and after the war they acquired a winter
residence in Florida. The best of Mrs. Stowe’s numerous later books is
probably “Oldtown Folks” (1869), dealing with life in Norfolk County,
Massachusetts, about the year 1800, and portraying some very realistic
characters. Such stories as “Pink and White Tyranny” (1871), “My Wife
and I” (1871), and “We and Our Neighbours” (1875), in which she aimed
to reform fashionable society, though successful in respect to sales,
were from an artistic point of view decided failures. In “Sam Lawson’s
Fireside Stories” (1871) and “Poganuc People” (1878), she returned to
New England Yankees and the life she most successfully drew. On the
whole it must be said that her reputation, while it lasts, will rest
chiefly upon “Uncle Tom” and the New England stories.
_John T. Trowbridge._--One of the most popular of writers for boys
is John Townsend Trowbridge (born in 1827). Educated in the common
schools, he learned Latin, Greek, and French by himself, taught school,
worked a year on an Illinois farm, and then settled down to writing
in New York City. Some of his books are “Father Brighthopes” (1853),
“Burrcliff” (1853), “Martin Merrivale” (1854), “Neighbour Jackwood”
(1857), a famous anti-slavery novel, perhaps a good second to “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin” in influence and popularity, “Cudjo’s Cave” (1864), and
“Coupon Bonds, and Other Stories” (1871). He has been a prolific writer
of healthful and finished stories for boys. John Burroughs has well
said of him: “He knows the heart of a boy and the heart of a man, and
has laid them both open in his books.”
_John Esten Cooke._--A romancer of the old school was John Esten Cooke
(1830-86), a younger brother of Philip Pendleton Cooke. A native
of Virginia, he found inspiration in the romantic history of that
State, drawing many of his characters from life. His first important
publication was “Leather Stocking and Silk, or Hunter John Myers
and His Times” (1854); his best story proved to be “The Virginia
Comedians, or Old Days in the Old Dominion” (1854), which deals with
the period just preceding the Revolution, and which, with its youthful
enthusiasm and interesting descriptions of colonial manners, has been
called by some critics the best novel written in the South down to
the Civil War. After serving in the Confederate army, Cooke sought to
utilise his military experiences in several dramatic stories; but his
reputation had been made, and his day had gone by.
_Maria S. Cummins._--In “The Lamplighter” (1854), Maria S. Cummins
(1827-66) achieved a success comparable to that of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
and “Ben Hur.” In “Mabel Vaughan” (1857) she produced probably a better
book. Both of her stories, however, while in the main true delineations
of girl and home life, are too evidently written with a didactic aim,
and are at times laboured and diffuse. Her other stories, “El Fureidis”
(1860), a story of Palestine, and “Haunted Hearts” (1864), are now
entirely forgotten.