Every one of his romantic tales has met with generous
welcome--“Graustark,” “Beverly of Graustark,” “Truxton King” and “The
Prince of Graustark.”
But Graustark, if the first string to Mr. McCutcheon’s bow, is far from
being the only one. Quite as wide in its popular appeal as any of the
Graustark tales was “Brewster’s Millions,” with its curious starting
problem. “Nedra” dealt with a desert island. “The Rose in the Ring”
was the story of a circus. Other books not to be overlooked are “Jane
Cable,” “The Daughter of Anderson Crow,” “The Man from Brodney’s,” and
in shorter form, “The Day of the Dog,” “The Purple Parasol,” “Cowardice
Court” and “The Alternative.”
[Illustration: OWEN JOHNSON]
_John Fox and Harold McGrath_
Someone recently spoke of John Fox, Jr., as a writer who never misses
fire. Certainly he has staked a definite claim to the Cumberland
Range and the primitive people who dwell in its valleys and along
its mountainsides. As early as 1894, “A Mountain Europa” appeared.
It was followed by “A Cumberland Vendetta,” “Hell-for-Sartain,” “The
Kentuckians,” “Crittendon,” and “Blue Grass and Rhododendrons.” But it
was not until 1903, with “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,” that
Mr. Fox came fully into his own. Incidentally, his fellow-craftsman,
Mr. George Barr McCutcheon, considers the title the best title in all
American fiction. The high standard established in “The Little Shepherd
of Kingdom Come” has been maintained in “The Trail of the Lonesome
Pine” and “The Heart of the Hills.” Into that imaginary Central Europe
which lies somewhere east of Dresden, west of Warsaw, and north of the
Balkans, Harold McGrath went for such early books as “Arms and the
Woman” and “The Puppet Crown.” Those tales were in the first rank among
the thousands of stories that about that time were being written about
the fanciful kingdoms and principalities, and the natural gift for
story spinning that the author showed then has been in evidence in his
subsequent tales in other fields. From among the twenty odd books that
now bear his name, it is not easy to make a selection. Perhaps those
most conspicuous on the score of popularity have been “The Man on the
Box,” “Half a Rogue,” “The Goose Girl,” “The Carpet of Bagdad,” and
“The Voice in the Fog.”
[Illustration: BRAND WHITLOCK]
[Illustration: THOMAS DIXON]
_A Group of Popular Story-Tellers_
While still an undergraduate, Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams wrote several of
the tales that went to make up his first published volume, “Princeton
Stories.” In his second volume, “The Stolen Story and Other Stories,”
Mr. Williams struck an entirely new note. Of the tale from which the
book drew its title, Richard Harding Davis, himself the author of
“Gallegher,” once said that it was “the very best of American yarns of
newspaper life.” Two others of the collection of striking ingenuity
were “The Great Secretary of State Interview” and “The Cub Reporter and
the King of Spain.” Among Jesse Lynch Williams’ later books are “The
Day-Dreamer,” “My Lost Duchess,” and “The Married Life of the Frederick
Carrolls.”
[Illustration: THEODORE DREISER]
It was along the road of anonymity that Basil King finally found the
way to pronounced success. In “Griselda,” “Let Not Man Put Asunder,”
“In the Garden of Charity,” “The Steps of Honor,” and “The Giant’s
Strength” he had won recognition as an accomplished story-teller. But
still his audience was a comparatively limited one. Then, in 1910,
appeared “The Inner Shrine,” a story of Franco-American life. It
was read from one end of the land to the other, and greatly piqued
curiosity as to the authorship, which, for many months, was carefully
concealed. A dozen different names were suggested and accepted before
it became an open secret that the story was the work of Basil King.
The success of “The Inner Shrine” was perhaps largely responsible for
the success of the subsequent “The Wild Olive” and “The Street Called
Straight.”
[Illustration: From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N. Y.