Henry Sydnor Harrison’s first novel, “Captivating Mary Carstairs,” was published anonymously, but in 1911 “Queed” appeared under the author’s own name, and at once took a place in the front rank of the year’s successful novels. There was a reminiscence of Dickens in the tale. Queed, “the little doctor,” as he is known to his associates in the story, is redeemed from over-acute egotism through the agency of two young women. At two years’ intervals following “Queed,” came “V. V.’s Eyes” and “Angela’s Business.”
ERNEST POOLE
Back in the nineties of the last century there was a corner of New York City known as Monkey Hill. It was in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, and crowning it, standing far back from the street, was a kind of chalet that served as a club for certain writing men. Among these men was Irving Bacheller, and to pleasant evenings in the club may be traced “Eben Holden” (1900), the most popular of Mr. Bacheller’s many popular books. As early as 1893, he had written “The Master of Silence;” “The Still House of Darrow” appeared in 1894. But it was “Eben Holden” that made the author’s name for a time a household word. That book was[Pg 22] followed by “D’ri and I,” “Darrel of the Blessed Isles,” and “Vergilius,” a tale of ancient Rome. In his later books, such as “Keeping Up With Lizzie” and “Charge It,” Mr. Bacheller plays whimsically with the problems of modern extravagance. His latest novel is “The Light in the Clearing.”
ZANE GREY
Fiction Notes in Varied Keys
If one novel can make a novelist, Ernest Poole earned the right to be considered one of the makers of modern American fiction when he wrote “The Harbor” (1915). Although the end of the story was somewhat marred by over-insistence on sociological problems, in the first part of the book the author struck a reminiscent note as charming as that struck by Du Maurier in “Peter Ibbetson.” No one had paid much attention to Mr. Poole’s earlier novel, “A Man’s Friends,” but in the general recognition of “The Harbor,” as a work of far more than ephemeral significance, there was hardly a dissenting voice. Not so widely popular, but marked by the same high quality of workmanship, is Mr. Poole’s later book, “His Family.”
Of the same generation at Princeton as Ernest Poole was Stephen French Whitman, and as mention of Mr. Poole’s name inevitably suggests “The Harbor,” so the name of Mr. Whitman calls up at once memories of “Predestined.” Unlike “The Harbor,” “Predestined” was not, speaking materially, a success. It was too grim, its ending was too pitiless. But very few who read the story of the degeneration of Felix Piers were able soon to forget it. In such later stories as “The Isle of Life” and “Children of Hope,” Mr. Whitman has forsaken New York for Italy and Sicily.
