Contemporary American Literature Part 16

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Rittenhouse.

Bookm. 11 ('00): 519, 521 (portrait).

Canad. M. 40 ('13): 455 (portrait); 47 ('16): 425 (portrait); 56 ('21): 521.

Critic, 40 ('02): 155 (portrait), 161; 42 ('03): 397 (portrait).

Ind. 57 ('04): 1131, 1132 (portrait); 65 ('08): 1335 (portrait).

Lit. Digest, 50 ('15): 113.

R. of Rs. 46 ('12): 619 (portrait).

+Willa Sibert Cather+--novelist, short-story writer.

Born at Winchester, Virginia, 1875. A.B., University of Nebraska, 1895; Litt. D., 1917. On staff of _Pittsburgh Daily Leader_, 1897-1901.

a.s.sociate editor of _McClure's Magazine_, 1906-12.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

1. Miss Cather's special field is the pioneer life of immigrants in the Middle West. Points to be considered are: (1) her realism; (2) her detachment or objectivity; (3) her sympathy.

2. In what other respects does she stand out among the leading women novelists of today?

3. What is the value of her material?

4. Compare her studies with those of Cahan (q.v.), Cournos (q.v.), and Tobenkin (q.v.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

April Twilights. 1903. (Poems.) The Troll Garden. 1905. (Short stories.) Alexander's Bridge. 1912.

The Bohemian Girl. 1912.

*O Pioneers. 1913.

The Song of the Lark. 1915.

*My Antonia. 1918.

Youth and the Bright Medusa. 1920. (Short Stories.) One of Ours. 1922.

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Overton.

Bookm. 21 ('05): 456 (portrait); 27 ('08): 152 (portrait); 53 ('21): 212 (portrait).

Lond. Times, June 23, 1921: 403.

Nation, 113 ('21): 92.

New Repub. 25 ('21): 233.

See also _Book Review Digest_, 1915, 1918, 1920.

+George Randolph Chester+ (Ohio, 1869)--novelist, short-story writer. The inventor of the _Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford_ type of fiction.

For bibliography, see _Who's Who in America_.

+Winston Churchill+--novelist.

Born at St. Louis, 1871. Graduate of U.S. Naval Academy, 1894. Honorary higher degrees. Member of New Hampshire Legislature 1903, 1905. Fought boss and corporation control and was barely defeated for governor of the state, 1908. Lives at Cornish, New Hampshire.

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING

As an aid to a.n.a.lysis of Mr. Churchill's work, consider Mr. Carl Van Doren's article in the _Nation_, of which the most striking pa.s.sages are quoted below:

To reflect a little upon this combination of heroic color and moral earnestness is to discover how much Mr. Churchill owes to the element injected into American life by Theodore Roosevelt.... Like him Mr. Churchill has habitually moved along the main lines of national feeling--believing in America and democracy with a fealty unshaken by any adverse evidence and delighting in the American pageant with a gusto rarely modified by the exercise of any critical intelligence. Morally he has been strenuous and eager; intellectually he has been nave and belated.

Once taken by an idea for a novel, he has always burned with it as if it were as new to the world as to him. Here lies, without much question, the secret of that genuine earnestness which pervades all his books: he writes out of the contagious pa.s.sion of a recent convert or a still excited discoverer. Here lies, too, without much question, the secret of Mr. Churchill's success in holding his audiences: a sort of unconscious politician among novelists, he gathers his premonitions at happy moments, when the drift is already setting in. Never once has Mr. Churchill like a philosopher or a seer, run off alone.

Even for those, however, who perceive that he belongs intellectually to a middle cla.s.s which is neither very subtle nor very profound on the one hand nor very shrewd or very downright on the other, it is impossible to withhold from Mr. Churchill the respect due a sincere, scrupulous, and upright man who has served the truth and his art according to his lights.... The sounds which have reached him from among the people have come from those who eagerly aspire to better things arrived at by orderly progress, from those who desire in some lawful way to outgrow the injustices and inequalities of civil existence and by fit methods to free the human spirit from all that clogs and stifles it. But as they aspire and intend better than they think, so, in concert with them, does Mr. Churchill.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*The Celebrity. 1898.

Richard Carvel. 1899.

The Crisis. 1901.

Mr. Keegan's Elopement. 1903.

The Crossing. 1904.

The t.i.tle-Mart. 1905. (Play.) *Coniston. 1906.

*Mr. Crewe's Career. 1908.

A Modern Chronicle. 1910.

*The Inside of the Cup. 1913.

A Far Country. 1915.

The Dwelling Place of Light. 1917.

A Traveller in War-Time. 1918.

Dr. Jonathan. 1919. (Play.)

STUDIES AND REVIEWS

Cooper.

Harkins.

Underwood.