BIBLIOGRAPHY
Will Carleton. (1845–1912.) Poems, 1871; Farm Ballads, 1873; Farm Legends, 1875; Young Folks' Centennial Rhymes, 1876; Farm Festivals, 1881; City Ballads, 1885; City Legends, 1889; City Festivals, 1892; Rhymes of Our Planet, 1895; The Old Infant, and Similar Stories, 1896; Songs of Two Centuries, 1902; Poems for Young Americans, 1906; In Old School Days, 1907; Drifted In, 1907.
John James Piatt. (1835–1917.) Poems of Two Friends [with Howells], 1859; The Nests at Washington [with Sarah Morgan Piatt], 1864; Poems in Sunshine and Firelight, 1866; Western Windows and Other Poems, 1869; Landmarks and Other Poems, 1871; Poems of House and Home, 1879; Penciled Fly-Leaves [prose], 1880; Idyls and Lyrics of the Ohio Valley, 1884; The Children Out of Doors [with Mrs. Piatt], 1885; At the Holy Well, 1887; A Book of Gold, 1889; Little New-World Idyls, 1893; The Ghost's Entry and Other Poems, 1895.
James Whitcomb Riley. (1849–1916.) The Old Swimmin'-Hole, 1883; The Boss Girl and Other Sketches, 1886; Afterwhiles, 1887; Pipes o' Pan at Zekesbury, 1889; Rhymes of Childhood Days, 1890; An Old Sweetheart of Mine, 1891; Old Fashioned Roses, 1891; Neighborly Poems on Friendship, Grief, and Farm Life, 1891; Flying Islands of the Night, 1892; Poems Here at Home, 1893; Poems and Yarns [with Edgar Wilson Nye], 1893; Green Fields and Running Brooks, 1893; Armazindy, 1894; The Child World, 1896; Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers, 1897; Poems and Prose Sketches, Homestead Edition, 10 vols., 1897; Child Rhymes, 1898; Love-Lyrics, 1899; Farm Rhymes, 1901; Book of Joyous Children, 1902; A Defective Santa Claus, 1904; His Pa's Romance, 1904; Out to Old Aunt Mary's, 1904; Songs o' Cheer, 1905; While the Heart Beats Young, 1906; Morning, 1907; The Raggedy Man, 1907; The Little Orphant Annie Book, 1908; The Boys of the Old Glee Club, 1908; Songs of Summer, 1908; Old Schoolday Romances, 1909; The Girl I Loved, 1910; Sequire Hawkins's Story, 1910; When She Was About Sixteen, 1911; The Lockerbie Book, 1911; Down Round the River and Other Poems, 1911; A Summer's Day and Other Poems, 1911; When the Frost Is on the Punkin and Other Poems, 1911; All the Year Round, 1912; Knee Deep in June and Other Poems, 1912; The Prayer Perfect and Other Poems, 1912; Good-bye, Jim, 1913; A Song of Long Ago, 1913; He and I, 1913; When My Dreams Come True, 1913; The Rose, 1913; Her Beautiful Eyes, 1913; Away, 1913; Do They Miss Me? 1913; The Riley Baby Book, 1913; Biographical Edition of the Works of James Whitcomb Riley. Complete Works. 1913.
Eugene Field. (1850–1896.) Tribune Primer, 1882; Culture's Garland, Being Memoranda of the Gradual Rise of Literature, Art, Music, and Society in Chicago and Other Western Ganglia, 1887; A Little Book of Western Verse, 1889, 1890; A Little Book of Profitable Tales, 1889, 1890; With Trumpet and Drum, 1892; Second Book of Verse, 1893; Echoes from the Sabine Farm [with Roswell M. Field], 1893; The Holy Cross and Other Tales, 1893; Love Songs of Childhood, 1894; The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, The House, Songs and Other Verse, Second Book of Tales, published posthumously in the Sabine edition; The Works of Eugene Field. Sabine Edition. Ten vols. 1896. The Poems of Eugene Field, Complete Editions. One volume. 1910. Eugene Field, A Study in Heredity and Contradictions. Slason Thompson. Two volumes. 1901.
Henry Cuyler Bunner. (1855–1896.) A Woman of Honor, 1883; Airs from Arcady, and Elsewhere, 1884; In Partnership: Studies in Story-telling [with James Brander Matthews], 1884; Midge, 1886; Story of a New York House, 1887; Short Sixes: Stories to Be Read While the Candle Burns, 1890; Zadoc Pine, and Other Stories, 1891; Rowen: Second-Crop Songs, 1892; Made in France: French Tales Told with a U. S. Twist, 1893; More Short Sixes, 1895; Love in Old Cloathes, and Other Stories, 1896.
Emma Lazarus. (1849–1887.) Poems and Translations, 1866; Admetus, 1871; Alide: a Romance, 1874; The Spagnoletto: a Play, 1876; Heine's Poems and Ballads Songs of a Semite, 1882; Poems of Emma Lazarus, 1888.
Celia Thaxter. (1836–1894.) Poems, 1872; Among the Isles of Shoals, 1873; Drift-weed: Poems, 1878; Poems for Children, 1883; The Cruise of the Mystery, and Other Poems, 1886; An Island Garden, 1894; Poems, Appledore Edition. Edited by Sarah Orne Jewett, 1896; Letters of Celia Thaxter, 1895.
Edith M. Thomas. (1854——.) A New Year's Masque, 1884; The Round Year, 1886; Lyrics and Sonnets, 1887; The Inverted Torch, 1890; Fair Shadow Land, 1893; In Sunshine Land, 1894; In the Young World, 1895; Winter Swallow; with Other Verse, 1896; Dancers and Other Legends and Lyrics, 1903; Cassia, and Other Verse, 1905; Children of Christmas, and Others, 1907; Guest at the Gate, 1909.
Richard Watson Gilder. (1844–1909.) The New Day, 1875; The Celestial Passion, 1878; Lyrics, 1878; The Poet and His Master, and Other Poems, 1878; Lyrics and Other Poems, 1885; Poems, 1887; Two Worlds, and Other Poems, 1891; Great Remembrance, and Other Poems, 1893; Five Books of Song, 1894; For the Country, 1897; In Palestine and Other Poems, 1898; Poems and Inscriptions, 1901; A Christmas Wreath, 1903; In the Heights, 1905; Book of Music, 1906; Fire Divine, 1907; Poems, Household Edition, 1908; Lincoln the Leader, 1909; Grover Cleveland, 1910.
Edward Roland Sill. (1841–1887.) The Hermitage and Other Poems, 1867; Venus of Milo, and Other Poems, 1883; Poems, 1887; The Hermitage, and Later Poems, 1889; Christmas in California: a Poem, 1898; Hermione, and Other Poems, 1899; Prose, 1900; Poems, special edition, 1902; Poems, Household Edition, 1906; The Life of Edward Rowland Sill, by W. B. Parker, 1915.
Robert Burns Wilson. (1850–1916.) Life and Love, 1887; Chant of a Woodland Spirit, 1894; The Shadows of the Trees, 1898; Until the Day Break
Madison Julius Cawein. (1865–1914.) Blooms of the Berry, 1887; The Triumph of Music and Other Lyrics, 1888; Accolon of Gaul and Other Poems, 1889; Lyrics and Idyls, 1890; Days and Dreams, 1891; Poems of Nature and Love, 1893; Intuitions of the Beautiful, 1895; White Snake and Other Poems, from the German, 1895; Garden of Dreams, 1896; Undertones, 1896; Shapes and Shadows, 1898; Myth and Romance, a Book of Verses, 1899; One Day and Another, 1901; Weeds by the Wall, 1901; A Voice on the Wind and Other Poems, 1902; Vale of Tempe; Poems, 1905; In Prose and Verse, 1906; Poems, 5 volumes, 1908; Shadow Garden [a Phantasy] and Other Plays, 1910; So Many Ways, 1911.
Richard Hovey. (1864–1900.) The Laurel: an Ode, 1889; Launcelot and Guenevere: a Poem in Dramas, 1891; Seaward: an Elegy on the Death of Thomas William Parsons, 1893; Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1894; More Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1896; The Quest of Merlin, 1898; The Marriage of Guenevere, 1898; The Birth of Galahad, 1898; Along the Trail: Book of Lyrics, 1898; Last Songs from Vagabondia [with Bliss Carman], 1900; Taliesin, 1900; Along the Trail, 1907; Launcelot and Guenevere: a Poem in Dramas, 5 vols., 1907; To the End of the Trail, 1908.
[CHAPTER XVI]
THE TRIUMPH OF THE SHORT STORY
Voluminous as may seem the poetry of the period when viewed by itself, it sinks into insignificance when viewed against the mass of prose that was contemporaneous with it. Overwhelmingly was it an age of prose fiction. He who explores it emerges with the impression that he has been threading a jungle chaotic and interminable. To chart it, to find law and tendency in it, seems at first impossible. For a generation or more every writer seems to have had laid upon him a necessity for narration. Never before such widespread eagerness to din tales into the ears of a world.
It was an age of brief fiction—this fact impresses one first of all. The jungle growth was short. Not half a dozen writers in the whole enormous group confined themselves to novels of length; the most distinctive fictional volumes of the period: The Luck of Roaring Camp, Old Creole Days, In the Tennessee Mountains, Nights with Uncle Remus, In Ole Virginia, A New England Nun, Deephaven, Main-Traveled Roads, Flute and Violin, and the like, were collections of tales. One may venture to call the period the age of the short story, or more accurately, perhaps, the age of short-breathed work. Everywhere literature in small parcels. In January, 1872, the North American Review, guardian of the old traditions, thought the conditions serious enough to call for earnest protest:
A new danger has recently shown itself.... The great demand on all sides is for short books, short articles, short sketches; no elaborate essays, no complete monographs, are wanted ... condensed thought, brief expression, the laconian method everywhere.... The volume sinks into an article, the article dwindles to an item to conciliate the demands of the public.
That this shortness of unit was a sign of weakness, we to-day by no means concede. It was rather a sign of originality, the symptom of a growing disregard for British methods and British opinion. The English genius always has been inclined to ponderousness—to great, slow-moving novels, to elaborate essays that get leisurely under way, to romances that in parts are treatises and in parts are histories, everywhere to solidity and deliberateness of gait. The North American Review protest was a British protest; it was the protest of conservatism against what to-day we can see was the new spirit of America. The American people from the first had been less phlegmatic, less conservative, than the English. There were climatic influences, it may be; there was surely a spirit of intensity everywhere that made for short efforts. The task of subduing in a single century a raw continent produced a people intolerant of the leisurely and the long drawn out. Poe perceived the tendency early. In a letter to Professor Charles Anthon he wrote:
Before quitting the Messenger I saw, or fancied I saw, through a long and dim vista the brilliant field for ambition which a magazine of bold and noble aims presented to him who should successfully establish it in America. I perceived that the country, from its very constitution, could not fail of affording in a few years a larger proportionate amount of readers than any upon earth. I perceived that the whole energetic, busy spirit of the age tended wholly to magazine literature—to the curt, the terse, the well timed and the readily diffused, in preference to the old forms of verbose and ponderous and inaccessible.
This far-sightedness made of Poe the father of the American type of short story. Irving undoubtedly had sown the earliest seeds, but Irving was an essayist and a sketch-writer rather than a maker of short stories in the modern sense. It was Poe's work to add art to the sketch—plot structure, unity of impression, verisimilitude of details, matter-of-factness, finesse—and, like Hawthorne, to throw over it the atmosphere of his own peculiar personality. That he evolved the form deliberately can not be doubted. In his oft-quoted review of Hawthorne's tales he laid down what may be considered as the first rules for short story writing ever formulated. His theories that all art is short-breathed, that a long poem is a tour de force against nature, and that the unit of measure in fiction is the amount that may be read with undiminished pleasure at a single sitting, are too well known to dwell upon.
But the short story of the mid-century, even in its best specimens, was an imperfect thing. In Hawthorne's tales the quality of the sketch or the essay is always discernible. All of Poe's tales, and Hawthorne's as well, lack vigor of characterization, sharpness of outline, swiftness of movement. "The Gold Bug," for instance, has its climax in the middle, is faulty in dialect, is utterly deficient in local color, and is worked out with characters as lifeless as mere symbols.
The vogue of the form was increased enormously by the annuals which figured so largely in the literary history of the mid-century, by the increasing numbers of literary pages in weekly newspapers, and by the growing influence of the magazines. The first volume of the Atlantic Monthly (1857) had an average of three stories in each number. But increase in quantity increased but little the quality. The short story of the annual was, for the most part, sentimental and over-romantic. Even the best work of the magazines is colorless and ineffective when judged by modern standards. Undoubtedly the best stories after Poe and Hawthorne and before Harte are Fitz-James O'Brien's "Diamond Lens," 1858, and "What Was It?" 1859, Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country," 1863, and "The Brick Moon," 1869, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson's "The Haunted Window," 1867. Well wrought they are for the most part, unusual in theme, and telling in effect, yet are they open nevertheless to the same criticisms which we have passed upon Poe.
The short story in its later form dates from Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp." Harte added reality, sharpness of outline, vividness of setting, vigor of characterization. The new period demanded actuality. The writer must speak with authority; he must have been a part of what he describes; he must have seen with his own eyes and he must reproduce with a verisimilitude that grips the reader and hastens him on as if he himself were a participant in the action. There must be at every point sense of actuality, and, moreover, strangeness—new and unheard-of types of humanity, uncouth dialects, peculiar environments. It was far more concentrated than the mid-century work, but it was much more given to general description and background effects and impressionistic characterization.
In the mid-eighties came the perfecting of the form, the molding of the short story into a finished work of art. Now was demanded compression, nervous rapidity of movement, sharpness of characterization, singleness of impression, culmination, finesse—a studied artistry that may be compared with even the best work of the French school of the same period. Stories like those of Aldrich, Stockton, Bunner, Garland, Allen, Bierce, Grace King, Mrs. Chopin, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris, from the standpoint of mere art at least, come near to perfection.
The decline of the short story, its degeneration into a journalistic form, the substitution all too often of smartness, paradox, sensation, for truth—all this is a modern instance outside the limits prescribed for our study.