Chapter Chapter 7 of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

cynical in tone. Jason Edwards (1891), A Little Norsk (1891), A Spoil of Office (1892), A Member of the Third House (1892), and Rose of Dutcher's Coolly (1895) followed in similar vein. The Eagle's Heart (1900), Her Mountain Lover (1901), The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop (1902), and Hesper (1903) are all stories of the rugged, unconventional life of mountain, mine, and camp, in which romance blends with realism. A Son of the Middle Border (1917) and A Daughter of the Middle Border (1921) are reminiscent of the author's own boyhood in Wisconsin and of his literary career East and West.

Will Payne (born in Illinois, 1865), since 1890 a Chicago journalist and for several years editor of The Economist, is the author of numerous short stories and of several novels. Jerry the Dreamer was published in 1896, The Story of Eva in 1901. Two of Mr. Payne's realistic novels, The Money Captain (1898) and Mr. Salt (1903), are distinctively studies of commercial life and admirable essays in this field.

Robert Herrick (born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1868), a Harvard man and, since 1893, a member of the Faculty in the University of Chicago, holds a leading place among the realists. Like Mr. Fuller, he has been impressed by certain phases of American social life and has written somewhat sombre but carefully studied narratives which have their setting in the great city of the middle West. These include The Gospel of Freedom (1898), The Web of Life (1900), The Common Lot (1904), Together (1908), A Life for a Life (1910), One Woman's Life (1913), and His Great Adventure (1913).

One of the youngest and one of the most promising in this group of western realists, Frank Norris (1870- 1902), was born at Chicago, but part of his life was spent on the Pacific coast and another portion of it in New York. He was a journalist and served as war correspondent in South Africa and Cuba. At the time of his death he was a resident in California. His claim to distinction is found in a projected series of three novels planned to embody his great idea, -- what he called the epic of the wheat. The Octopus (1901) is the first of the series and deals with the planting and harvesting of the crop; its scene is laid in southern California. The Pit (1903) pictures the selling of the wheat, and dramatically portrays the life which centres in the Chicago Board of Trade. The last book of the trilogy was to have dealt with the distribution of the wheat in Europe, and would have been entitled The Wolf, as symbolizing the experiences of famine in Russia. Although uncompleted, the large conception of this young enthusiast is worthy of more than passing note. In his realism Frank Norris was a disciple of the French novelist, Zola. Theodore Dreiser (born 1871), a native of Indiana, has frankly followed the same model. Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerhardt (1911), The Titan (1914), and The Genius (1915) are representative works.

Realism of a cruder and more primitive type is found in the narratives of Jack London (1876-1916), Californian, whose roving life and love of adventure are reflected in The Son of the Wolf (1900), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), and Burning Daylight (1910).

The Short Story.

Attention has been called to the prominence attained by the short story as a well-defined and important development in American fiction. While most of our many writers of short stories have also done notable work as novelists and are included in the list already named, at least two are conspicuous as authors who never wrote novels at all. These are Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), and O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter (1867-1910). Ambrose Bierce, a Californian, wrote romantic tales of the grotesque and weird type created by Poe. They appeared in periodicals, were collected and published in three volumes: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1892), The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter (1892), and Can Such Things Be? (1895). Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in North Carolina, and, after a roving life, emerged in New York in 1902 and became identified with the city -- not only as resident, but as a keen observer and interpreter of its picturesque and varied types. The stories of O. Henry, immensely popular but over-rated, doubtless, from the point of view of literary art, were published in a collected edition of twelve volumes (Doubleday, 1912).