MAKERS OF MODERN AMERICAN FICTION
(MEN)
By ARTHUR B. MAURICE _Former Editor of The Bookman, author of “New York of the Novelists”_
MENTOR GRAVURES
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS · BOOTH TARKINGTON · STEWART EDWARD WHITE JACK LONDON · ROBERT W. CHAMBERS · REX BEACH
EDITORIAL NOTE.--In this number of The Mentor the men that are making modern American fiction are considered. The women fiction writers will be considered in a later number.
Now and again we are privileged to touch hands with some literaryfigure of the older generation, who was of the earth when Poe and hisVirginia lived in the Fordham cottage; when Fenimore Cooper, returnedfrom his long stay in Europe, was disputing with his neighbors onthe shores of Lake Oneida, when Irving was looking down upon thenoble Hudson from the slopes of his Sunnyside estate; and Holmes wasbabbling wise philosophy over his coffee cup at the Boston breakfasttable. But there are not many of these links with the past left, andthe number is diminishing rapidly. Far beyond the Biblical three-scoreand ten, Mr. William Dean Howells, as the dean of our literature, isa figure upholding its richest traditions; turning three-score andten is Mr. James Lane Allen, whose name recalls the rare style andthe throbbing life of the books dealing with the Blue Grass region ofKentucky. They are almost the last of the surviving great literaryfigures of yesterday. These men and their work have been covered inMentor Number 25, “American Novelists.” The writing men of today, themen with whom this article has to do, are for the most part those thathave not traveled beyond late youth or early middle age. Their hatswere flung into the ring in the present century; or, at the earliest,in the nineties of the last century. Finding the field of the novelista broader one than it was in their fathers’ time, they have blithelyventured, in their search for themes and material, to the four cornersof the real or the imaginary earth. The following pages present ageneral review of the work of our well known fiction writers of theday. The works of Owen Wister, Winston Churchill, Thomas Nelson Pageand George W. Cable are also considered fully in Mentor Number 25, sowe lead off this article with a simple mention of these distinguishedstory-writers. In Wister’s work there is a primal bigness and strengthand, in certain passages, great tenderness and romantic charm. Two ofhis best known books, “The Virginian” and “Lady Baltimore,” revealthese qualities.
JAMES LANE ALLEN]
From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N. Y.
WINSTON CHURCHILL]
Press Illustrating Service
JACK LONDON
Bust, by Finn Haakon Frolich, unveiled in Honolulu, after London hadmade his cruise in the _Snark_]
Mr. Winston Churchill began with the somewhat trivial “The Celebrity”(1898), regarded when it appeared as a satirical hit at the personalityof Richard Harding Davis. Books that followed were, “Richard Carvel,”“The Crisis,” “The Crossing,” “A Far Country,” “Coniston,” “Mr. Crewe’sCareer,” “The Inside of the Cup,” “The Dwelling-Place of Light.” It isto a splendid persistence, an inexhaustible patience, a rigid adherenceto his own ideals both in style and substance, that Winston Churchillowes the high position among American contemporary writers of fictionthat he holds and has held for nearly two decades. Thomas Nelson Pageand George W. Cable attained fame long ago as interpreters, in fiction,of Southern life, Mr. Page by his tender and beautiful “Marse Chan,”“Meh Lady” and other stories, Mr. Cable by his romances of “Old CreoleDays” and “John March, Southerner.”
Bradley studios, N. Y.
JOHN FOX, JR.]
_Norris’ Realism and McCutcheon’s Romanticism_
More than fifteen years have passed since Frank Norris died, yet noone has yet come to take quite his place as an apostle of Americanrealism. Before he fell under the spell of Émile Zola, with “McTeague,”and began his Trilogy of the Wheat, he had been the most ardent ofromanticists. His earliest ventures in literature were tales oflove and chivalry, written when he was a boy in his teens in Paris.“McTeague” was begun in the undergraduate days at the University ofCalifornia. It began to assume shape in his year of student work atHarvard; but was elaborated and polished for four years before thepublic was allowed to see it. In the meantime “Moran of the Lady Letty”had been dashed off in an interval of relaxation, and became Norris’first published book. Then came to Norris what he considered “the bigidea,” that summed up at once American life and American prosperity. Hewould write the Trilogy of the Wheat. In the first book, “The Octopus,”he told of the fields and elevators of the Far West. “The Pit” showedthe wheat as the symbol of mad speculation. With “The Wolf,” to picturethe lives of the consumers in the Eastern States and in Europe, theTrilogy was to end. But before the tale was written Frank Norris died,at thirty-two years of age.
GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON]
A few years ago, Mr. George Barr McCutcheon was asked the question,“Where is Graustark?” Whimsically he attempted to jot down on paperdirections for journeying to the imaginary mountain kingdom, startingfrom a railway station in Indiana. Someone rather ill-naturedlysuggested that Mr. McCutcheon had originally discovered this country inAnthony Hope’s “The Prisoner of Zenda.” But then someone else pointedout that Anthony Hope in turn had found his inspiration in Stevenson’s“Prince Otto,” and that R. L. S. himself had certainly owed somethingto the Gerolstein of M. Eugène Sue’s “The Mysteries of Paris.” Soneither the exact whereabouts of Graustark nor its ultimate source isof great importance. What really counts is that hundreds of thousandsof readers have found delight in following the adventures of Mr.McCutcheon’s stately heroines and somewhat irreverent heroes.
BOOTH TARKINGTON
From a late picture taken at his summer home in Maine]
Every one of his romantic tales has met with generouswelcome--“Graustark,” “Beverly of Graustark,” “Truxton King” and “ThePrince of Graustark.”
But Graustark, if the first string to Mr. McCutcheon’s bow, is far frombeing the only one. Quite as wide in its popular appeal as any of theGraustark tales was “Brewster’s Millions,” with its curious startingproblem. “Nedra” dealt with a desert island. “The Rose in the Ring”was the story of a circus. Other books not to be overlooked are “JaneCable,” “The Daughter of Anderson Crow,” “The Man from Brodney’s,” andin shorter form, “The Day of the Dog,” “The Purple Parasol,” “CowardiceCourt” and “The Alternative.”
OWEN JOHNSON]
_John Fox and Harold McGrath_
Someone recently spoke of John Fox, Jr., as a writer who never missesfire. Certainly he has staked a definite claim to the CumberlandRange and the primitive people who dwell in its valleys and alongits mountainsides. As early as 1894, “A Mountain Europa” appeared.It was followed by “A Cumberland Vendetta,” “Hell-for-Sartain,” “TheKentuckians,” “Crittendon,” and “Blue Grass and Rhododendrons.” But itwas not until 1903, with “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,” thatMr. Fox came fully into his own. Incidentally, his fellow-craftsman,Mr. George Barr McCutcheon, considers the title the best title in allAmerican fiction. The high standard established in “The Little Shepherdof Kingdom Come” has been maintained in “The Trail of the LonesomePine” and “The Heart of the Hills.” Into that imaginary Central Europewhich lies somewhere east of Dresden, west of Warsaw, and north of theBalkans, Harold McGrath went for such early books as “Arms and theWoman” and “The Puppet Crown.” Those tales were in the first rank amongthe thousands of stories that about that time were being written aboutthe fanciful kingdoms and principalities, and the natural gift forstory spinning that the author showed then has been in evidence in hissubsequent tales in other fields. From among the twenty odd books thatnow bear his name, it is not easy to make a selection. Perhaps thosemost conspicuous on the score of popularity have been “The Man on theBox,” “Half a Rogue,” “The Goose Girl,” “The Carpet of Bagdad,” and“The Voice in the Fog.”
BRAND WHITLOCK]
THOMAS DIXON]
_A Group of Popular Story-Tellers_
While still an undergraduate, Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams wrote several ofthe tales that went to make up his first published volume, “PrincetonStories.” In his second volume, “The Stolen Story and Other Stories,”Mr. Williams struck an entirely new note. Of the tale from which thebook drew its title, Richard Harding Davis, himself the author of“Gallegher,” once said that it was “the very best of American yarns ofnewspaper life.” Two others of the collection of striking ingenuitywere “The Great Secretary of State Interview” and “The Cub Reporter andthe King of Spain.” Among Jesse Lynch Williams’ later books are “TheDay-Dreamer,” “My Lost Duchess,” and “The Married Life of the FrederickCarrolls.”
THEODORE DREISER]
It was along the road of anonymity that Basil King finally found theway to pronounced success. In “Griselda,” “Let Not Man Put Asunder,”“In the Garden of Charity,” “The Steps of Honor,” and “The Giant’sStrength” he had won recognition as an accomplished story-teller. Butstill his audience was a comparatively limited one. Then, in 1910,appeared “The Inner Shrine,” a story of Franco-American life. Itwas read from one end of the land to the other, and greatly piquedcuriosity as to the authorship, which, for many months, was carefullyconcealed. A dozen different names were suggested and accepted beforeit became an open secret that the story was the work of Basil King.The success of “The Inner Shrine” was perhaps largely responsible forthe success of the subsequent “The Wild Olive” and “The Street CalledStraight.”
From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N. Y.
JESSE LYNCH WILLIAMS]
In by-gone years it was Brand Whitlock, the Mayor of Toledo; in recenttimes it has been Brand Whitlock, the American Minister to Belgium,that has obscured Brand Whitlock, novelist. Yet despite the height hehas attained in the fields of politics and of diplomacy, he is, and islikely always to remain, at heart a man of letters. Some day it may begiven to him to “write the book as he sees it, for the God of things asthey are.” Meanwhile he claims recognition here on the basis of suchworks of fiction as “The Thirteenth District,” “The Happy Average,”“The Turn of the Balance,” and “The Gold Brick,” a collection of shortstories that appeared in 1910.
Campbell studios, N. Y.
LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE]
Samuel Hopkins Adams’ first essay in the field of sustained fictionwas “The Mystery,” written in 1905, in collaboration with StewartEdward White. The following year appeared “The Flying Death,” a taleof Montauk Point. Subsequent novels by Mr. Adams have been “AverageJones,” “The Secret of Lonesome Cave,” “Little Miss Grouch,” and “TheClarion,” the last named being a story involving newspaper life and thesinister influence of the tainted money of patent medicine advertiserson the liberty of the press.
From photograph, copyright by Pach Brothers, N. Y.
IRVING BACHELLER]
Despite a career of literary activity that goes back twenty years,it is almost entirely to the books of the past four or five yearsthat Rupert Hughes owes his present position as a popular novelist.In this later work, in such books as “What Will People Say?” “EmptyPockets” and “We Can’t Have Everything,” he has found his themein modern Gotham: New York in the grip of the latest follies, theinsensate, all-day and all-night pursuit of pleasure, the dance, theeating and drinking, and the squandering. Mr. Hughes’ novels reveal arange of knowledge of even the remote corners of the great city thathas been painstakingly acquired, and that is used with the sense ofselection of the accomplished story-teller. Only a few months beyondundergraduate life Owen Johnson published “Arrows of the Almighty”and “In the Name of Liberty.” They were read by a limited audience,mildly applauded, and then forgotten. Later, showing the Balzacianinfluence, came “Max Fargus,” dealing with the seamy side of New Yorklaw offices. In the point of material success, it could hardly beconsidered an improvement on the earlier books. Then, one day, in awhimsical mood, the author turned back to memories of his schoolboyyears in Lawrenceville. The road that led to success and recognitionhad been found. From one end of the land to the other, growing boys,and boys that had grown up, and boys with gray beards laughed overevery fresh exploit of “The Prodigious Hickey,” and “Dink Stover,”and “Doc McNooder,” and “The Tennessee Shad,” and “The TriumphantEgghead,” and “Brian de Boru Finnegan.” Motor parties traveling betweenNew York and Philadelphia acquired the habit of breaking the journeyat Lawrenceville for the purpose of visiting “The Jigger Shop,” whereHungry Smeed established the Great Pancake record. Then Mr. Johnsontook one of his heroes from the school to the university, and “Stoverof Yale” was the most talked-of book of a month. Turning to a broaderfield, the author found, in the turbulent life of twentieth-century NewYork, the background for “The Sixty-first Second,” “The Salamander,”“Making Money,” “The Woman Gives,” and “Virtuous Wives.”
Courtesy Charles Scribner’s Sons
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS]
It is no disparagement of Edwin Lefevre as a workman to say that oneshort story, written at a single sitting before breakfast, is of morepermanent importance than all the rest of his production combined. Forthat story is “The Woman and Her Bonds,” which, without any hesitation,is to be ranked among the really big short tales of American fiction.It is the first of the collection known as “Wall Street Stories,” abook which brought to Mr. Lefevre quick recognition. Wall Street isthe author’s particular field, and many of his characters are easilyrecognized by those in intimate touch with the money mart of theWestern world. Besides “Wall Street Stories,” Mr. Lefevre has written“Samson Rock of Wall Street,” “The Golden Flood,” and “To the LastPenny.”
_Dreiser and Dixon_
From photograph by Florence M. Hendershot, Chicago
HAMLIN GARLAND]
A vigorous, if undeniably crude, figure in contemporary Americanfiction, is Theodore Dreiser. Lacking style and literary distinction,frequently bordering on the ridiculous, he nevertheless, by a rigiddevotion to a certain kind of realism that omits no details, has builtup a following that chooses to regard him as something of a great man.His first book, written a dozen years or more ago, was “Sister Carrie.”It introduced a soiled, unsentimental, rather sordid, but patheticand very human heroine. After a career in Chicago, Sister Carrie madeher way to New York, and eventually climbed to comfortable heights ofworldly success. “Jennie Gerhardt” (1911) was in much the same veinand manner. “The Financier” (1912) gave a picture of American businesslife as it was or as Mr. Dreiser conceived it to be during the CivilWar and the Reconstruction Period. Whatever its merits or demerits maybe, “The Genius,” his latest novel, owes its chief prominence to itsmuch debated morality.
Press Illustrating Service
RUPERT HUGHES AND MRS. HUGHES IN THEIR LONG ISLAND HOME]
After a life of activity in many fields, Thomas Dixon entered thewriting lists with “The Leopard’s Spots” (1902), in which, powerfullyif somewhat unevenly, he depicted conditions in certain states ofthe South under the carpet-bag and negro domination of the latesixties. Following up the same phase of history, he introduced, in“The Clansman,” the Kluklux Klan, and showed the work accomplished bythat mysterious organization in bringing about the redemption of theafflicted district. Among Mr. Dixon’s later books are “The Traitor,”“The One Woman,” and “The Sins of the Father.”
CAPT. RUPERT HUGHES]
_Harrison and Bacheller_
Henry Sydnor Harrison’s first novel, “Captivating Mary Carstairs,” waspublished anonymously, but in 1911 “Queed” appeared under the author’sown name, and at once took a place in the front rank of the year’ssuccessful novels. There was a reminiscence of Dickens in the tale.Queed, “the little doctor,” as he is known to his associates in thestory, is redeemed from over-acute egotism through the agency of twoyoung women. At two years’ intervals following “Queed,” came “V. V.’sEyes” and “Angela’s Business.”
>
ERNEST POOLE]
Back in the nineties of the last century there was a corner of NewYork City known as Monkey Hill. It was in the shadow of the BrooklynBridge, and crowning it, standing far back from the street, was a kindof chalet that served as a club for certain writing men. Among thesemen was Irving Bacheller, and to pleasant evenings in the club maybe traced “Eben Holden” (1900), the most popular of Mr. Bacheller’smany popular books. As early as 1893, he had written “The Master ofSilence;” “The Still House of Darrow” appeared in 1894. But it was“Eben Holden” that made the author’s name for a time a householdword. That book was followed by “D’ri and I,” “Darrel of the BlessedIsles,” and “Vergilius,” a tale of ancient Rome. In his later books,such as “Keeping Up With Lizzie” and “Charge It,” Mr. Bacheller playswhimsically with the problems of modern extravagance. His latest novelis “The Light in the Clearing.”
ZANE GREY]
_Fiction Notes in Varied Keys_
If one novel can make a novelist, Ernest Poole earned the right to beconsidered one of the makers of modern American fiction when he wrote“The Harbor” (1915). Although the end of the story was somewhat marredby over-insistence on sociological problems, in the first part of thebook the author struck a reminiscent note as charming as that struckby Du Maurier in “Peter Ibbetson.” No one had paid much attentionto Mr. Poole’s earlier novel, “A Man’s Friends,” but in the generalrecognition of “The Harbor,” as a work of far more than ephemeralsignificance, there was hardly a dissenting voice. Not so widelypopular, but marked by the same high quality of workmanship, is Mr.Poole’s later book, “His Family.”
Of the same generation at Princeton as Ernest Poole was Stephen FrenchWhitman, and as mention of Mr. Poole’s name inevitably suggests “TheHarbor,” so the name of Mr. Whitman calls up at once memories of“Predestined.” Unlike “The Harbor,” “Predestined” was not, speakingmaterially, a success. It was too grim, its ending was too pitiless.But very few who read the story of the degeneration of Felix Piers wereable soon to forget it. In such later stories as “The Isle of Life” and“Children of Hope,” Mr. Whitman has forsaken New York for Italy andSicily.
JOSEPH C. LINCOLN]
It is now almost twenty years since Henry Kitchell Webster and SamuelMerwin began their writing careers in collaboration. Together theywrote “The Short Line War” (1899), “Calumet K” and “Comrade John.” Allthese were well-told tales, and the later years, when each man has beenworking alone, have shown that neither one carried an undue share ofthe burden. Mr. Webster’s books include “The Whispering Man,” “A Kingin Khaki,” “The Ghost Girl,” “The Butterfly” and “The Real Adventure.”Mr. Merwin’s work has been unusual in the variety of its themes.Washington and the Constitution of the United States were ingredientsof “The Citadel.” The adventures of an American girl in China werenarrated in “The Charmed Life of Miss Austen.” Musical theories, thesegregated district of Yokohama, and incidents in Chinese hotels wentto the making of “Anthony the Absolute.” “The Honey Bee” is the storyof a woman whose life has been in an American department store, whomakes a trip to Paris, and there falls in love with one Blink Moran, ofthe prize-ring.
JOSEPH LINCOLN’S HOME
Summit Avenue, Hackensack, N. J.]
_Fiction of Adventure_
There is no questioning the force that Hamlin Garland has been in theliterature of our time. He has told his story of his own life andliterary activities in “A Son of the Middle Border” (1917), a volumethat was at once accepted as one of the foremost of American literaryautobiographies. In no way detracting from the quality of Mr. Garland’slater work is the ventured opinion that he has never surpassed someof his earlier stories. His writing career began about 1890, when thefirst of the tales of “Main-Traveled Roads” struck a fresh note infiction. Between 1895 and 1898 he wrote “Rose of Dutcher’s Cooley,”and, in 1902, “The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop.” These, with“Main-Traveled Roads” are still probably his most popular books. In1900 “The Eagle’s Heart” appeared, and later “Hesper,” “The Tyranny ofthe Dark,” “The Long Trail,” “The Shadow World” and “Cavanagh, ForestRanger.”
HARRY LEON WILSON’S BUNGALOW IN THE OZARK MOUNTAINS, MO.]
HARRY LEON WILSON]
Writing men of our generation have begun under the magic spell ofStevenson. To Lloyd Osbourne it was given to serve his apprenticeshipto R. L. S., as Maupassant served his apprenticeship to Flaubert, and,while yet an apprentice, to be accepted as a collaborator. Togetherthe stepfather and the stepson worked out “The Wrong Box” (1889), “TheWrecker” (1892), and “The Ebb Tide” (1894). Then Stevenson passed oninto Shadow Land, and some years later Osbourne began alone with “TheQueen Versus Billy” and “Love the Fiddler.” In the first decade of thepresent century the motor-car was still something of a novelty, and assuch almost a virgin field for fiction. It was of its then bafflingproblems and incomprehensible moods that Lloyd Osbourne told in “TheMotor-maniacs,” “Three Speeds Forward,” and “Baby Bullet.” Later booksare “Wild Justice,” “The Adventurer,” and “A Person of Some Importance.”
WILL PAYNE]
From photograph, copyright by Paul Thompson, N.Y.
SAMUEL MERWIN]
A certain letter of the alphabet for a time seemed to exert acabalistic influence on Louis Joseph Vance. “The Brass Bowl” appearedin 1907. The book of the next year was “The Black Bag.” In 1909 itwas “The Bronze Bell.” There ended the use of the double B, but in1912, Mr. Vance wrote “The Bandbox.” In the meantime had appeared“The Pool of Flame,” “The Fortune Hunter,” “No Man’s Land,” and“Cynthia-of-the-Minute.” Among the books that have followed “TheBandbox” are “The Day of Days,” “Joan Thursday,” showing Mr. Vance athis best, “The Lone Wolf,” and very recently, “The False Faces,” inwhich the Lone Wolf returns to play a great part in the World War.
EDWIN LEFEVRE]
_Each Holds a Place of His Own_
The Law has ever had countless stories to tell. There is hardly a taleby Arthur Train that does not, in some way, lead back to one of theoffices that cluster about the Criminal Courts Building facing CentreStreet, on the lower end of Manhattan Island. In that neighborhoodswung the shingle of the law firm of Gottlieb & Quibble, as relatedin “The Confessions of Artemas Quibble.” Mr. Train’s first book,“McAllister and His Double” (1905), began in a Fifth Avenue club, butbefore a dozen pages had been finished, fate had carried McAllisterto the Tombs Prison. The thrice-told tales of Pontin’s Restaurant inFranklin Street, where the lawyers gather at the noon hour, went tomake “The Prisoner at the Bar,” “True Stories of Crime” and “Courts,Criminals and the Camorra.” Like Mr. Train, William Hamilton Osbornehas also achieved a place in Literature as well as Law.
ARTHUR TRAIN]
There are readers who regard the very facility of Gouverneur Morris asa curse, believing that if writing to him had been harder work, hispresent achievement would be considerably greater. His first book, “ABunch of Grapes,” dates back to his undergraduate days at Yale. Fouryears later, in 1901, “Tom Beauling” appeared, to be followed the nextyear by “Aladdin O’Brien.” “Yellow Men and White” showed what he coulddo in the vein of “Treasure Island.” Of more enduring quality was “TheVoice in the Rice.” It is not surprising that many of our novelistshave begun with tales of undergraduate life. “Princeton Stories” wasthe first book of Jesse Lynch Williams. “Harvard Episodes” of CharlesM. Flandrau. Will Irwin’s first fling at the game of writing was“Stanford Stories” (1910). That book was done in collaboration. Alsoin collaboration, this time with Gelett Burgess, the creator of “ThePurple Cow,” the editor of _The Lark_, and a humorist of rare whim,were written Mr. Irwin’s next two books. It was a short sketch of theold San Francisco before the earthquake, called “The City That Was,”that first made Will Irwin’s name widely known. Of more substantialproportions were “The House of Mystery,” “The Readjustment” and“Beating Back.”
; ROBERT HERRICK]
Of a certain genuine importance has been the work of Robert Herrick.The author, like his heroes, has been finding the threads of life’sweb in a rather sorry tangle, and groping for a solution of theworld’s real meaning. It was of problems big and vital in our Americancivilization that Mr. Herrick wrote in “The Memoirs of an AmericanCitizen,” “The Common Lot,” “The Web of Life,” “The Real World,”“The Gospel of Freedom,” and “Together.” In “The Master of the Inn”he has achieved an exceptional short story. Also deserving of highattention is Meredith Nicholson, who began in 1903 with “The MainChance,” and achieved unusual popular success somewhat later with “TheHouse of a Thousand Candles” and “The Port of Missing Men.” AmongMr. Nicholson’s more recent books are “The Lords of High Decision,”“Hoosier Chronicle,” “Otherwise Phyllis” and “The Siege of the SevenSuitors.” For tales breathing the spirit of the West and intricatemystery stories, Zane Grey and Burton Egbert Stevenson are knownrespectively. Mr. Grey’s best known books are “The Heritage of theDesert,” “The Light of Western Stars,” “The Lone Star Ranger,” “TheHeart of the Desert” and “The U. P. Trail.” Wherever a well-told yarnof intricate mystery is appreciated, such books as Mr. Stevenson’s “TheMarathon Mystery,” “The Destroyer” and “The Boule Cabinet” have foundgenerous welcome. Will Payne is the author of “Jerry the Dreamer,” thestriking “Story of Eva,” “Mr. Salt” and “The Losing Game”; Edward W.Townsend in writing of Chimmie Fadden did not forfeit the place as anovelist to which he is entitled by reason of such books as “A Daughterof the Tenements,” “Days Like These” and “Lees and Leaven”; and HarryLeon Wilson, who years ago made a definite impression with “The Seeker”and “The Spenders,” and who of late has been moving a continent tolaughter by the dexterity with which he confronted the very BritishRuggles with the complicated problems of social life in the town of RedGap--somewhere in America.
CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY]
Moffett studios, Chicago
EMERSON HOUGH]
MAXIMILLIAN FOSTER]
Besides all these there are Joseph C. Lincoln and Cyrus Townsend Brady,the first one in high favor for his breezy stories of Cape Cod lifeand character, redolent of the salt sea air, the latter for his manyentertaining tales of plain and desert; and Sewell Ford, who createdthe slangy but very human “Shorty McCabe” and “Torchy”; and those twopungent writers of Western episodes, Peter Kyne and Charles E. VanLoan. Emerson Hough has given us rousing tales of the Middle and FarWest, of the Kentucky mountains and Alaska. Holman Day’s excellentstories breathe of the Maine woods, and Roy Norton has rendered tributeto the sea. Harris Dickson, a son of Mississippi, has woven into storyform some throbbing incidents of Southern history, and has depictednumerous sunny corners of every-day existence below the Mason and Dixonline. James Branch Cabell is a spinner of charming romances; some ofthe best have a medieval French flavor. Harold Bell Wright is wellknown as the author of “Barbara Worth” and several other books whosesales have climbed into the hundreds of thousands. Richard WashburnChild is a young American who wields a vigorous pen in the portrayalof national character, and James Oppenheim, not to be confused withthe Englishman, E. Phillips Oppenheim, represents vital phases ofpresent-day city life. Joseph Hergesheimer has won a place amongwriters by reason of his picturesque style and original invention. Acomprehensive list of American-born novelists must also include thenames of Leroy Scott, Henry B. Fuller, Frank H. Spearman, Earl DerrBiggers and Arthur Reeve, all of whom have within late years producedpopular successes.
The roll of the makers of modern American fiction is a long one, yetnone can gainsay that the average of achievement is high.
_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_
THE MEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS. _By Burton Rascoe_, Literary Editor, Chicago _Tribune_.
SOME AMERICAN STORY-TELLERS. _By F. T. Cooper._
The Mentor: Makers of American Fiction, Vol. 6, Num. 14, Serial No. 162, September 1, 1918 Page 8