Chapter Chapter 7 of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Over the Threshold.

With the passing of twenty years, the majority of the novelists whose work was current at the incoming of the century have passed from the stage, but not all. The Pulitzer prize, awarded annually by a competent committee in New York City for the best American novel of the year, was accorded in 1919 to Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and in 1921 to his Alice Adams. In 1920 it was given to Mrs. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Mrs. Deland's vigorous novel, The Vehement Flame, Mrs. Ellen Glasgow's One Man in His Time, and Old Crow, by Alice Brown, were among the books of 1922.

The New-Comers.

Meanwhile new writers have found their place in the modern group. Among these the more notable are: Mary Roberts Rinehart, author of The Circular Staircase (1908), The Man in Lower Ten (1909), Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), The Amazing Interlude (1917) -- a war novel, and many entertaining stories; Willa Siebert Cather (born 1875), whose Nebraska novels, O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia (1918), are admirable; Dorothy Canfield Fisher (born 1879), author of The Squirrel Cage (1912), The Bent Twig (1915), and The Brimming Cup (1921); Henry Kitchell Webster (born 1875), whose earlier material was drawn from the drama of commercial life, but whose later work, represented by Real Life (1920) and Mary Wollaston (1920), is eminently modern; Will Levington Comfort (born 1878), a writer of tales of adventure like Routledge Rides Alone (1910), and others with a more serious purpose, like She Buildeth Her House (1911), Fate Knocks at the Door (1912), and Down Among Men (1913); James Branch Cabell (born 1879), whose art is at its best in The Line of Love (1905, 1921), The Cream of the Jest (1917), and Domnei (1920); Ernest Poole (born 1880), author of the The Harbor (1915), His Family (1917), His Second Wife (1918), and Blind (1920); Henry Sydnor Harrison (born 1880), author of Queed (1911), V. V.'s Eyes (1913), and Saint Teresa (1922); Joseph Hergesheimer (born 1880), whose impressive story of The Three Black Pennys (1917) was followed by the novel, Java Head, in 1919; and Sinclair Lewis (born 1885), whose Main Street (1920) presents a realistic study of "small town" life and character.

Gene Stratton Porter (1868-1925) and Harold Bell Wright (born 1872) have a place in popular esteem somewhat out of proportion to the literary merit of their work. Mrs. Porter, whose home was in Indiana, a naturalist especially interested in bird life, wrote A Girl of the Limberlost in 1909; subsequent novels, The Harvester (1911), Laddie (1913), and others have had an extended popularity. Harold Bell Wright, for ten years a pastor of the Disciples (Christian Church) in Missouri and Kansas, like his early prototype, Rev. E.P. Roe (1838-88), retired from the ministry and began a career as a novelist. He had already laid the foundations of his later success with That Printer of Udell's (1903) and The Shepherd of the Hills (1907). The Calling of Dan Matthews (1909) and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1911), together with later volumes, have numbered their readers by thousands.

Books of Reference.

Further information about our novelists and excellent criticism of their work will be found in A History of American Literature Since 1870, by Fred Lewis Pattee (Century Co., 1915) and in The American Novel and Contemporary American Novelists 1900-1920, by Carl Van Doren (Macmillan, 1921, 1922). Some American Story Tellers, by Frederic Taber Cooper (Holt, 1911) and American Short Story Writers, by Blanche Colton Williams (Moffat, Yard, 1920) are also helpful.