IV

THE NOVEL: HOWELLS, JAMES, AND CRAWFORD

REFERENCES

WORKS: The works of Howells are published by the Harpers; those of Crawford, by Macmillan. The earlier works of James were mostly published by Osgood and by Ticknor and Fields, Boston; the later ones are from various publishers. For lists of titles, see Foley.

BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM: For biographies, see any good dictionary of American biography; for criticism, consult Poole's Index for references to various reviews and critical notes. Particularly to be noted is Howells's article on James in The Century for November, 1882.

SELECTIONS: For Howells, Stedman, and Hutchinson, IX, 479-505; James, ibid., X, 179–197; Crawford, ibid., XI, 143–153.

BOTH in New York and in New England the most popular form of recent literature has probably been the short story. From influences in a way common to both regions, combined with influences quite distinct, there have emerged meanwhile the three American novelists who have attained such eminence as to demand separate consideration. One-Howells-is completely American; the other two-James and Crawford--are Americans whose principal work has been deeply affected by European environment. It is worth our while to consider them in turn.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837-) was born in Ohio, Howells. where he tried journalism and meanwhile wrote verse. He early came to New England and met Longfellow, Lowell, and the other chief figures of our New England Renaissance. In 1860 he wrote a campaign life of Lincoln.

Diffidence.

Between 1861 and 1865 he was our consul at Venice. In 1872 he succeeded Fields as editor of the Atlantic Monthly. For some years he lived in or near Boston. For the past ten or twelve years he has lived in New York. There, particularly in the "Easy Chair" of Harper's Monthly, he has probably had as marked an influence upon fellow writers as upon the public, who know him better through his books.

These books are, broadly speaking, essays, farces, and novels. The essays have sometimes been reminiscent of Ohio or early New England, sometimes finely appreciative of literature. The farces, slight as such things must be, have shown brilliancy of dialogue and persistent reality of characterization. This last quality appears even more conspicuously in the most important work of Howells— his novels. As early as 1871 he wrote Their Wedding Journey; since then he has published some forty novels, of which The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) is perhaps the best. All are patient, insistent, yet often brilliant studies of average men and women.

Howells has written so much, so faithfully, and in a spirit at once so earnestly American and so kindly, that it is hard to say why he has not achieved more certainly powerful results. His chief limitation seems to be a kind of lifelong diffidence, which has forbidden a feeling of intimate familiarity even with the scenes and the people of his own creation. This is perhaps due to the circumstances of his life. An Ohio boy, he was of course a foreigner in Italy; and during his long and welcome residence near Boston he never seems to have felt quite at home. His pleasant reminiscences of his friendships with the eminent literary men of the past show implicitly the sentiments rather of

a pilgrim than of a fellow. And the vivid creatures of his imagination are after all seen externally. He never quite sympathizes with them; he never seems quite to understand them. In brief, his novels rather indicate, with tireless energy, the material of which literature might be made than mould that material into final form. With all his limitations, nevertheless, he is surely the most noteworthy American novelist of the years through which he is still happily living.

James.

For it is not quite certain that HENRY JAMES (1843-) Henry should be unreservedly called American. His earlier years were passed in America, partly in New York and partly in New England; his first novels concerned American life, and were published in Boston; but for more than twenty years he has lived abroad, mostly in England; and his later work is perhaps the most subtle study of English life, in its more complex aspects, that has ever been made. The so-called "international novel" is largely of his construction. Roderick Hudson (1875), that model short story Daisy Miller (1878), and the Portrait of a Lady (1881) are among his best-known works. He has also written a life of Hawthorne and several other volumes of very discerning criticism.

Temperamentally, James is completely an artist. From beginning to end, his effort has been to feel, as deeply as possible, the distinct character of any subject with which he has dealt; and to set it forth in the most delicate shades of its significance. The exquisite refinement of both his perception and his style has proved insidious. Year by year his work has grown more subtle, more difficult to understand without an intensity and persistence of attention which no man of letters may confidently

Crawford.

demand. Yet there can be no doubt that such persistent
attention to the pages of James will never lack reward.
Among contemporary English novelists, none is more
masterly.

FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD (1854-) is less American
still. Except for the fact that, though born in Italy, he
is of American origin and has always been loyal to Amer
ican tradition, he can hardly be called American at all.
He began writing fiction only after prolonged study in
various parts of the world. Of his fifty years, all but
four or five, at intervals, have been passed abroad.

Without pretence to the first rank in literature, Crawford is a born story-teller. There is not one of his many volumes to which one cannot confidently turn for entertainment. And his intimate knowledge of modern Italy is said to give his stories of contemporary Italian life—such as Saracinesca (1887)—a value similar to that of Anthony Trollope's stories about Victorian England. Crawford lacks the pertinacity of observation which is among the chief merits of Howells; he is utterly without such subtlety as is at once the chief grace and the chief error of James. He is less important than either of them, but far more readable. And in spite of qualities which sometimes seem meretricious, he has a robust vigor of feeling and of manner which makes his work throughout inspiriting.

Such are the three American novelists who, from among such influences as produced our elder literature, have Summary. surely achieved eminence. Clearly they are too diverse, and too near us, for generalization. We must turn now to regions of our country less remarkable in literary history than either New England or New York, but not to be neglected. And first to the South.

V

THE SOUTH

REFERENCES

GENERAL: Louise Manly, Southern Literature, Richmond: Johnson Publishing Co., 1895; Woodberry, America in Literature, New York: Harper, 1903; pp. 114-149; Trent, Simms (see below); W. M. Baskervill, Southern Writers. Biographical and Critical Studies, Nashville: Barber & Smith. (Harris, Lanier, Cable, Craddock, Page, Allen,

and others.)

SIMMS: Novels, 10 vols., New York: Armstrong, 1882; Poems, 2 vols., New York: Redfield, 1853. W. P. Trent's William Gilmore Simms, Boston: Houghton, 1892 (AML), has a good bibliography. For selections, see Duyckinck, II, 430-433; Griswold's Poetry, 345-348; Griswold's Prose, 505-517; Stedman, 106-107; Stedman and Hutchinson, VI, 270-277.

HAYNE: Poems, Boston: Lothrop, 1882. See Sidney Lanier's "Paul H. Hayne's Poetry" in Music and Poetry, New York: Scribner, 1898, pp. 197-211. There are selections from Hayne in Stedman and Hutchinson, VIII, 461–466.

TIMROD: Timrod's Works (Memorial Edition), Boston: Houghton, 1899, contains a memoir. For selections, see Stedman and Hutchinson, VIII, 408-411.

LANIER: Works, New York: Scribner (uniform, but no collected edition); for a list of titles, see Foley, 165-166. To the edition of Lanier's poems, edited by his wife (New York: Scribner, 1884), W. H. Ward contributed a biography. There are selections in Stedman and Hutchinson, X, 145-151.

For biographies of later Southern writers, whose works are easily accessible, see any good dictionary of American biography; for criticism upon them, see the magazine articles and reviews which can readily be found by means of Poole's Index.

THE Middle States and New England, after certain literary achievements, seem now in a stage either of decline