in the fifties and sixties an immensely popular novelist. She was the
daughter of John Winterbotham, an English woollen manufacturer who had
come to America, and was born at Humphreysville, Connecticut. In 1831,
she married Edward Stephens, a publisher, and began in 1835 to edit
_The Portland Magazine_, founded by her husband. Later, she edited
_The Ladies’ Companion_ and became an associate editor of _Graham’s_
and _Peterson’s_, to which she contributed over twenty serials. Her
first elaborate novel, “Fashion and Famine” (1854), had a very large
circulation and was three times translated into French. A novel
of affected intensity, it contained some excellent delineation of
character. Among her other works were “Zana, or The Heiress of Clare
Hall” (1854), republished as “The Heiress of Greenhurst,” “The Old
Homestead” (1855), “Sibyl Chase” (1862), “The Rejected Wife” (1863),
“Married in Haste” (1870), “The Reigning Belle” (1872), and “Norton’s
Rest” (1877). She was attentive to details and wrote in a condensed and
forcible style.
_Marion Harland._--Marion Harland is the pseudonym under which Mrs.
Mary Virginia Terhune (born in 1831), a Virginian of New England
ancestry, became known for a number of short stories, novels, and
miscellaneous matter. Her fiction is of the romantic type, full of
incident, and dealing with brave personages. Some of her stories are
“Alone, a Tale of Southern Life and Manners” (1854), “The Hidden Path”
(1855), “Moss-Side” (1857), “Miriam” (1860), “Nemesis” (1860), “Husks”
(1863), “Sunnybank” (1866), “At Last” (1870), “Judith” (1883), and “A
Gallant Fight” (1888). She has been editorially connected with a number
of juvenile magazines.
_Curtis_, _Willis_, _Holland_.--George William Curtis belongs in the
main, of course, with the essayists, where his life will be narrated.
He was the author of “Prue and I” (1856), a series of papers written
originally for _Putnam’s_, and together forming a slight story of
charming domestic life, in which sentiment, fancy, and a broad
optimistic philosophy are pervasive features; and of an unsuccessful
novel, “Trumps” (1861), which he began in 1859 as a serial in _Harper’s
Weekly_. In view of the broad experience of its author, his fondness
for good novels, his discriminating taste, his facility in expression,
this failure of “Trumps” was remarkable. The truth is that Curtis had
not rightly estimated his powers. He could not manage an elaborate
plot with skill, and he also made the same mistake that marred the
work of many writers already noticed--he was too much concerned to
point the moral. The general effect, as Mr. Cary points out,[14] is
that “Trumps” becomes “a Sunday-school story, written by a man of
rare gifts, some of which betray the elusive charm of genius, but
still essentially of that class, producing, and apparently intended
to produce, the impression that in the end virtue triumphs and vice
comes to a miserable end.” In the long run, this is eternally true; but
the great artists do not talk about it very much. A similar failure,
though for different reasons, was the one novel written by the prolific
Nathaniel P. Willis, “Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life Else Untold”
(1857), an early and dull experiment in the field of international
novels. It was a story whose general distortion of things amounted
almost to caricature, since it was based on superficial rather than
deep and careful observation of character. In the same year Josiah
Gilbert Holland (1819-81) made his _début_ in the field of fiction with
“The Bay Path,” a story of the settlement of the Connecticut Valley,
filled largely with historical characters, and generally faithful to
the manners and thought of the age portrayed. A more ambitious story,
“Miss Gilbert’s Career” (1860), is a realistic modern novel in which a
characteristic Yankee community is described with great fidelity. His
later novels, “Arthur Bonnicastle” (1873), “The Story of Sevenoaks”
(1875), and “Nicholas Minturn” (1877), cannot on the whole be said to
possess high literary merit; the author was avowedly a moralist, and
the best that can be said of them is that they did no harm.
_Major John William de Forest._--Major John William de Forest (born in
1826) began writing fiction with a very romantic and very poor novel
called “Witching Times,” published serially in _Putnam’s_, 1856-57,
and followed it with a number of works which made him one of the most
popular novelists of the seventies--“Seacliff” (1859), “Miss Ravenel’s
Conversion” (1867), a book out of his own experience, and his first in
realistic vein, “Overland” (1871), “Kate Beaumont” (1872), “Honest John
Vane” (1875), “Playing the Mischief” (1875), and many others. Of “Miss
Ravenel’s Conversion” Mr. Howells has said: “It was one of the best
American novels that I had known, and was of an advanced realism before
realism was known by that name.”
_Robert Lowell._--In 1858 appeared “The New Priest of Conception Bay,”
in which the Rev. Robert Traill Spence Lowell (1816-91), an elder
brother of James Russell Lowell, and an Episcopal clergyman, painted
in bright and cheerful colours the rural life of Newfoundland with
which he became familiar during his sojourn at Bay Roberts in 1843-47.
No truer picture of the simple fisher folk of Newfoundland was ever
produced--even to a delicate discrimination of dialects. Mr. Lowell’s
reputation was not ill sustained by his later though less known books,
“Antony Brade” (1874) and “A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town”
(1878), which dealt with the quaint life in the Dutch villages of
eastern New York.
_Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford._--Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford
(born in 1835), a native of Maine who has passed most of her life in
Massachusetts, made her reputation with a short story of Parisian
life, “In a Cellar,” in _The Atlantic_ in 1859. In “Sir Rohan’s Ghost”
(1859), “The Amber Gods” (in _The Atlantic_, 1860), which gave her a
considerable reputation, “Azarian,” (1864), and “A Thief in the Night”
(1872), she produced sombre works vividly imaginative and intense in
feeling. She was among the first to work the mine of ghostly romance.
Her stories have never been very popular; her fondness for the sensuous
and the splendid repels many readers. Yet for sheer and overwhelming
intensity and for complete success in producing the effect sought, “A
Thief in the Night” must be given a high place as a work of art.
_Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris._--Mrs. Miriam Coles Harris (born in 1834),
who has spent most of her life in and near New York City, wrote a
number of stories popular in their day, some of them being still read.
“Rutledge” (1860) and “The Sutherlands” (1862) were widely circulated.
Her later stories include “A Perfect Adonis” (1875), “Phœbe” (1884),
“Missy” (1885), and “An Utter Failure” (1890).
_Theodore Winthrop._--Theodore Winthrop (1828-61) deserves more than
passing mention, not so much for what he actually accomplished as
for what his brief life gave promise of doing. Born in New Haven,
Connecticut, a descendant of Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut
and at twenty a graduate of Yale, he travelled much abroad, went
to Panama in the employment of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,
and afterward sojourned in California and Oregon, visiting also the
island of Vancouver and some of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s stations.
He was admitted to the bar in 1855, but became more fond of politics
and literature than of law. For several years, he worked on his
novels; but though one was accepted for publication, none appeared
in his lifetime. At the opening of the war he went to the front with
the Seventh New York Regiment, and fell, bravely fighting, at Great
Bethel. His descriptions of his march to Washington, in _The Atlantic
Monthly_, had attracted much attention, and after his death his novels
appeared in rapid succession, “Cecil Dreeme” in 1861 and “John Brent”
and “Edwin Brothertoft” in 1862. The first is a gruesome tale of life
in New York, full of broad sweep and passion, immature but not devoid
of power. “John Brent,” the best of his stories, is an imaginative
tale into which he wove a record of his Western experiences; it “had
the merit, in its day especially, of delineating Western scenes and
characters with sympathy and skill, at a time when the West was almost
virgin soil to literature.” “Edwin Brothertoft” is a melodramatic story
of the American Revolution, at times crude in expression, but strong
in plot and in its play of light and shade. Had Winthrop lived, our
literature beyond question would have been far richer. He comprehended
as did few others the deep throbbing life of America, not only in its
externals but in its less obvious features; and abating his youthful
“breeziness,” he would doubtless have reproduced some parts of that
life on enduring canvas.
_Fitz-James O’Brien._--Another brilliant writer whose career was cut
short by the war was Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-62), a native of County
Limerick, Ireland. He was educated at the University of Dublin; and
after spending his inheritance of £8,000 in London, he came to America
in 1852 and from that time on devoted himself to literature. In New
York he became a prominent figure among the Bohemian set and won
distinguished social and literary success. Besides much clever verse,
he wrote for the magazines some marvellously ingenious tales, for
example “The Diamond Lens,” “The Wondersmith,” “The Golden Ingot,”
and “Mother of Pearl.” The reader is occasionally reminded of Poe and
Hawthorne, but is more often led to wonder why O’Brien has so long lain
in neglect; for some of his stories are powerful in a high degree. Like
Winthrop, O’Brien in 1861 became a soldier in the Seventh New York
Regiment and went to the front. On February 26, 1862 he was severely
wounded in a skirmish, and in April he died. Nearly twenty years later,
his friend William Winter edited “The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James
O’Brien” (1881).
=The Civil War.=--It is not surprising that the Civil War partially,
at least, dried up the springs of literature and art in America. It
was an epoch of concentration, of action; men had little time for
reading novels or writing them; the newspaper any day might chronicle
as sublimely heroic or as pathetic events as could be found in fiction.
Comparatively few novels of distinction were written, therefore, during
the war and the two or three years following it, the Reconstruction
period. Some worthy novels which appeared in those years, for example
Mrs. Stoddard’s “Morgesons,” failed of an appreciative audience.
The close of the war marked the beginning of a new era in American
fiction. As Mr. Morse points out, people no longer cared for stories
about the Indians and about the Revolution. The Indians had retreated
into that world of romance with which the modern world, ignorant of
“Nick of the Woods,” associates them; the Revolution was ancient
history by the side of the more terrible conflict just ended, and a
quarter of a century must elapse before the earlier war would make a
background for fiction. Romance, which, as we have seen, had already
begun to lose favour, must now yield to realism; there must be pictures
of life at home, in the market-place, in the fields, in the teeming
cities; there must be greater skill in handling the narrative so as
to make it a transcript from daily life. The lover of romance will
doubtless deplore this tendency; but it was inevitable, and it has
dictated the path of fiction almost to the present day.
_Oliver Wendell Holmes._--The many-sided activity of Dr. Holmes
extended to the writing of three novels--“medicated novels” they have
been called, but the term does not apply to all equally well. Certainly
they all belong to the large and increasing group of “problem novels.”
The first, “Elsie Venner: a Romance of Destiny” (1861), published
when the author had passed the half-century mark, made its first
appearance as “The Professor’s Story” in _The Atlantic Monthly_. The
mother of Elsie Venner, a short time before giving birth to her child,
was fatally bitten by a _crotalus_ or rattlesnake, and from birth the
child is partially endowed with a serpent nature, which enables her
to exercise a peculiar influence over those with whom she is brought
into contact, especially the sensitive schoolmistress Helen Darley.
“The real aim of the story,” says Dr. Holmes himself, “was to test the
doctrine of ‘original sin’ and human responsibility for the disordered
volition coming under that technical denomination. Was Elsie Venner,
poisoned by the venom of a _crotalus_ before she was born, morally
responsible for the ‘volitional’ aberrations which, translated into
acts, become what is known as sin, and, it may be, what is punished
as crime? If, on presentation of the evidence, she becomes by the
verdict of the human conscience a proper object of divine pity and
not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral poisoning, wherein lies
the difference between her position at the bar of judgment, human
or divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who received a moral
poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his first breath?” It
will thus be seen that what the author intended was nothing less than
an onslaught upon one of the great fundamental dogmas of orthodox
theology. Fifty years ago, this was a bold undertaking indeed. The
intensely tragic motive of the novel is relieved by some chapters of
pure comedy, in which figure the mean, calculating, money-making Silas
Peckham, the vulgar splurging Sprowles, and a varied group of other
minor characters. “The Guardian Angel” (1867) forms a natural sequel
to “Elsie Venner”; it deals with some of the problems of heredity,
attempting “to show the successive evolution of some inherited
qualities in the character of Myrtle Hazard,” the heroine. Less tragic
than the earlier tale, “The Guardian Angel” is more pleasant to read,
and a more artistic creation. An interesting plot is skilfully worked
out and the characterisation is subtle and true. In his third novel,
“A Mortal Antipathy” (1885), Dr. Holmes at seventy-six plainly showed
that he had passed his creative period. He yielded, to a much greater
degree than in the other stories, to the rambling propensity which,
charming and natural enough in “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,”
seriously mars the continuity of a novel in which plot-interest is
intended to figure. In this the author deals with the influence on a
man’s after-life of an antipathy (toward womankind) arising from a
severe shock received in early childhood--an antipathy which is happily
removed when the hero, helpless on a sick-bed in a burning house, is
borne out by a brave and athletic girl. In spite of its “medicated”
character, the story is full of delightful gossip, amusing descriptions
and characterisation, and thoughtful speculation over miscellaneous
matters connected with the healing art. If, as some contend, Dr.
Holmes has in these books emphasised the moral issue at the expense
of artistic perfection, they still have great value as records
of personality. In Mr. Noble’s words, the author “is a man whose
temperament makes him intensely interested in human nature, and whose
bent of mind gives him a special interest in any development of human
nature which, by exhibiting exceptional possibilities or limitations,
casts some strange side-light upon its more ordinary and normal
conditions.”
_Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard._--Mrs. Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard
(1823-1902), wife of the poet Richard Henry Stoddard, wrote three
novels remarkable in their day, “The Morgesons” (1862), “Two Men”
(1865), and “Temple House” (1867), which found few readers in
their time and are now almost forgotten, but which evinced careful
observation of life and customs, and decided if not eccentric
individuality. Republished in 1888 and again in 1901, “The
Morgesons” was praised by such judicious critics as Mr. Stedman, Mr.
Julian Hawthorne, and Professor Beers (who declared he had read it
four times); but it again failed of popular favour; it had become
old-fashioned.
_Edmund Kirke._--Under this pen name, James Roberts Gilmore (1822-1903)
was for many years a well known writer. In 1857 he retired from
business with a competency, and thereafter devoted himself mainly
(except 1873-83) to literature. His earlier novels, “Among the Pines”
(1862), “My Southern Friends” (1862), “Among the Guerillas” (1863),
“Down in Tennessee” (1863), “Adrift in Dixie” (1863), and “On the
Border” (1864), were concerned with the Southern life with which he
became acquainted in war-time. In later life, he wrote “The Last of the
Thorndikes” (1889) and “A Mountain-White Heroine” (1889). His earlier
stories were popular and did much to acquaint readers with slavery.
_Thomas Bailey Aldrich._--Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) began his
career as a novelist in 1862 with the publication in _The Atlantic
Monthly_ (June) of a little romance, “Père Antoine’s Date Palm,” which
secured sympathetic recognition from Hawthorne. In the same year, he
also published “Out of His Head, a Romance in Prose,” a collection of
six short stories; but these remained his sole efforts in fiction until
1869, when he published his largely autobiographical “Story of a Bad
Boy.” The hero of this little idyl of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Tom
Bailey, who is after all “not a very bad boy,” has become a classic
character in the fiction of boyhood. “Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories”
(1873) are ingenious tales, in the first of which a surprising hoax
is managed with consummate skill. “Prudence Palfrey” (1874) is an
old-fashioned novel of incident in which a well-nigh impossible plot
is made plausible. “The Queen of Sheba” (1877) is perhaps the most
skilfully done of all his stories; the action takes place in New
Hampshire and Switzerland, and the story is full of humour. “The
Stillwater Tragedy” (1880) is a realistic portrayal of life in a New
England manufacturing village, the _motif_ being the detection of a
murderer, and the sombreness of the situation being relieved by a love
story. “Two Bites at a Cherry, and Other Tales,” subtle, amusing,
ingenious, appeared in 1893. Probably most of us will agree with Mr.
Howells when he says that Aldrich was a worker in the novel with the
instinct of a romancer, and was at his best in the romantic parts of
his stories. Of his prose works his short stories will probably endure
longest.
_Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney._--Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney (born in
1824), a native of Boston and sister of the eccentric George Francis
Train, wrote a number of stories for young people, beginning with
“Boys at Chequasset” (1862) and “Faith Gartney’s Girlhood” (1863) and
including also “The Gayworthys” (1865), which ranks among the best of
New England novels, “A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life” (1866),
“Patience Strong’s Outings” (1868), “Hitherto” (1869), “We Girls”
(1870), “Bonnyborough” (1885), and “Ascutney Street” (1888). To some
critics the didactic tone of her stories has seemed so prominent as to
impair their artistic value; others, like Mrs. Stowe, defend her from
the charge of being “preachy.” A vein of mysticism runs through her
stories. Her style is effective and her creations are real and lifelike.
_Bayard Taylor._--The writing of novels did not play a great part in
the life of Bayard Taylor, who felt himself to be first of all a poet;
but his four novels are not without interest. Taylor had already tried
his hand at writing stories for _The Atlantic Monthly_ when he began
in 1861 the writing of a novel. Before he left America for Russia he
had written seven chapters. He finished the book in St. Petersburg and
published it in 1863 under the title of “Hannah Thurston, a Story of
American Life.” Although the scene is nominally laid in central New
York, the life is essentially that of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
The plot is similar to that of Tennyson’s “Princess.” It is, however,
of secondary importance; the author’s main purpose apparently was to
satirise the more or less superficial reforms of the time--abolition,
total abstinence, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and the like. The homely
and commonplace village life of his time Taylor described vividly and
truthfully; but it cannot be said that his characters, amusing as many
of them are, are distinctly individualised. Even so, the book was
received with favour. It was promptly translated into German, Swedish,
and Russian. Its success encouraged Taylor to further efforts. “John
Godfrey’s Fortunes, Related by Himself” appeared late in 1864. This is
a story of life in Pennsylvania and in New York City. A good plot is
worked out, and some of the characters are interesting, though for the
most part they are too obviously good or bad. John Godfrey in a sense
was Taylor himself, but the book can hardly be called an autobiography.
In 1866 appeared “The Story of Kennett,” in some respects the best of
Taylor’s novels. For it he drew largely upon his memories of Chester
County, and most of the characters were drawn from life. The scene at
the funeral of Abiah Barton, where the hero discovers his worthless and
cowardly father, has been sharply censured; but Taylor contended that,
because of the vein of superstition in Mary Potter, it was the most
justifiable chapter in the book. “Joseph and His Friend: a Story of
Pennsylvania,” the last of Taylor’s novels, appeared serially in _The
Atlantic_, and was published in book form in 1870. It is a disagreeable
story of duplicity, in Bismarck’s view of which many have shared, that
the villain gets off too easily. To the above should be added a volume
of shorter stories issued under the title of “Beauty and the Beast.” In
general, Taylor’s novels exhibit skilful workmanship and sympathetic
and often vivid delineations of character.
_Louisa May Alcott._--Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), daughter of Amos
Bronson Alcott, became well known as a writer of wholesome fiction,
especially for young readers. She began life as a teacher and during
the Civil War was an army nurse. “Moods” (1864), her first novel,
was widely read, and contains passages of strength. “Little Women”
(1868-69), written as a girls’ book, remains her best. A kind of
sequel to it was “Little Men; Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys”
(1871), followed in its turn by “Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out”
(1886). Other similar stories were “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870),
“Work, a Story of Experience” (1873), partly autobiographical, “Eight
Cousins” (1875) and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1876), and “A Modern
Mephistopheles” (1877), a disagreeable but vigorous and imaginative
study of moral deterioration. Her stories continue to be popular with
the young, though the newer juvenile fiction will in time supersede
them.
_Richard Malcolm Johnston._--Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-98) was
one of the most popular of the Southern writers of his time. The son
of a Georgia planter and Baptist clergyman, he in time became a Roman
Catholic. Graduating from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1841, he
practised law for some years, in 1857 declining a judgeship to become
professor of belles-lettres in the University of Georgia. From 1861
till 1882, he was engaged in conducting a boys’ boarding-school, first
at Sparta, Georgia, then near Baltimore. In 1864 he published, as
“Georgia Sketches,” four stories of life in Georgia. To these, others
were added in 1874 under the title of “Dukesborough Tales,” his best
book. He afterward wrote “Old Mark Langston” (1884), “Mr. Absalom
Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk” (1888), “Ogeechee Cross-Firings”
(1889), “The Primes and Their Neighbours” (1891), “Mr. Billy Downs and
His Likes” (1892), “Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims, and Other Stories”
(1892), “Widow Guthrie” (1893), “Little Ike Templin, and Other Stories”
(1894), “Old Times in Middle Georgia” (1897), and “Pearce Amerson’s
Will” (1898). In all he published more than eighty stories. He was not
a master of plot, and the structure of his tales is loose and faulty in
sequence; but his characters have the magic touch of reality, and his
descriptions of ante-bellum Georgia days cannot be neglected.