VIII
Of the younger group of novelists, those writers born in the sixties and early seventies and publishing their first novels during the first decade of the new century, we shall say little. The new spirit of nationality that came in the seventies did not furnish the impulse that produced the work of this second generation of the period. It is a school of novelists distinct and by itself. We may only call the roll of its leaders, arranging it, perhaps, in the order of seniority: Gertrude Franklin Atherton (1859——), Bliss Perry (1860——), Owen Wister (1860——), John Fox, Jr. (1863——), Holman F. Day (1865——), Robert W. Chambers (1865——), Meredith Nicholson (1866——), David Graham Philips (1867–1911), Robert Herrick (1868——), Newton Booth Tarkington (1869——), Mary Johnston (1870——), Edith Wharton (——), Alice Hegan Rice (1870——), Winston Churchill (1871——), Stewart Edward White (1873——), Ellen Anderson Glasgow (1874——), Jack London (1876–1916). The earlier work of some of these writers falls under classifications which we have already discussed, as for instance Churchill's Richard Carvel, Mary Johnston's Prisoners of Hope, Chambers's Cardigan, and Wister's The Virginian. Of the great mass of the fiction of the group, however, and of a still younger group we shall say nothing. It was not inspired by the impulse that in the sixties and the seventies produced the National Period.