Of the many interpreters of the
South I need mention only three: Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and
Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree ("Charles Egbert Craddock") has made
the mountains of Tennessee her special province. Chicago has several
novelists of her own: for example, Mr. Henry Fuller, author of _The
Cliff Dwellers_, Mr. Will Payne, and that close student of Chicago
slang, Mr. George Ade, the author of _Artie_. The Middle West counts
such novelists as Miss "Octave Thanet" and Mr. Hamlin Garland, whose
_Main Travelled Roads_ contains some very remarkable work. The Far West
is best represented, perhaps, in the lively and graphic sketches of Mr.
Owen Wister; while California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude
Atherton and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two Americans living abroad have
made noteworthy contributions to this sociological survey of their
native land: the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has dealt mainly with
country life in New York State, and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose
picture, in _The Open Question_, of a Southern family impoverished by
the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost
fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest
but not insignificant part in this movement of national
self-portraiture.
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