Constance Fenimore Woolson's Rodman the Keeper, 1880, undoubtedly was a strong force in the new Southern revival. During the eighties Miss Woolson was regarded as the most promising of the younger writers. She was a grand niece of Cooper, a fact made much of, and she had written short stories of unusual brilliance, her collection, Castle Nowhere, indeed, ranking as a pioneer book in a new field. Again was she destined to be a pioneer. In 1873 the frail health of her mother sent her into the South and for six years she made her home in Florida, spending her summers in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. During the rest of her life her stories were studies of Southern life and Southern conditions. Only Anne of her novels and two late collections of Italian tales may be noted as exceptions.
It was in Rodman the Keeper, a collection of her magazine stories of the late seventies, that the North found its first adequate picture of the territory over which had been fought the Civil War. The Tourgee novels, which had created a real sensation, were political documents, but here were studies carefully wrought by one who did not take sides. It showed the desolation wrought by the armies during the four years, the pathos of broken homes and ruined plantations, the rankling bitterness, especially in the hearts of women, the helpless pride of the survivors, and the curious differences between the Northern and the Southern temperaments. It was careful work. Contemporary opinion seemed to be voiced by the Boston Literary World: The stories "more thoroughly represent the South than anything of the kind that has been written since the war."
Necessarily the standpoint was that of an observer from without. There was no dialect in the tales, there were no revealings of the heart of Southern life as in Harris and Page and the others who had arisen from the material they used, but there was beauty and pathos and a careful realism that carried conviction. A sketch like "Felipe," for example, is a prose idyl, "Up the Blue Ridge" is the Craddock region seen with Northern eyes, and the story that gives the title to the book catches the spirit of the defeated South as few writers not Southern born have ever done.
For a time Miss Woolson held a commanding place among the novelists of the period. After her untimely death in 1894 Stedman wrote that she "was one of the leading women in the American literature of the century," and again, "No woman of rarer personal qualities, or with more decided gifts as a novelist, figured in her own generation of American writers." But time has not sustained this contemporary verdict. Her ambitious novel Anne, over which she toiled for three years, brilliant as it may be in parts, has not held its place. And her short stories, rare though they may have been in the day of their newness, are not to be compared with the perfect art of such later writers as Miss King and Mrs. Chopin. She must take her place as one of the pioneers of the period who discovered a field and prepared an audience for writers who were to follow.
IX
The appearance of Page's In Ole Virginia, 1887, marks the culmination of the period of Southern themes. The sensation caused by The Quick or the Dead? by Amélie Rives (later Princess Troubetzkoy) in 1888 need only be referred to. It had little significance either local or otherwise. The younger writers, born for the most part at a later date, like John Fox, Jr., Mary Johnston, and Ellen Glasgow, belong to another period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richard Malcolm Johnston. (1822–1898.) The English Classics, 1860; Georgia Sketches, by an Old Man, 1864; Dukesborough Tales, 1871, 1874, 1883, 1892; English Literature (with William Hand Browne), 1872; Life of Alexander H. Stephens (with William Hand Browne), 1878; Old Mark Langston, a Tale of Duke's Creek, 1883; Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk, 1888; Ogeechee Cross Firings, 1889; The Primes and Their Neighbors, 1891; Studies Literary and Scientific, 1891; Mr. Billy Downs and His Likes, 1892; Mr. Fortner's Marital Claims and Other Stories, 1892; Two Gray Tourists, 1893; Widow Guthrie, 1893; Little Ike Templin and Other Stories, 1894; Old Times in Middle Georgia, 1897; Pearce Amerson's Will, 1898.
Joel Chandler Harris. (1848–1908.) Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, 1880; Nights with Uncle Remus, Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation, 1883; Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White, 1884; Story of Aaron, 1885; Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches, 1887; Daddy Jake the Runaway, and Short Stories Told After Dark, 1889; Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches and Stories, 1891; On the Plantation, a Story of a Georgia Boy's Adventures During the War, 1892; Uncle Remus and His Friends, 1892; Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country, 1894; Mr. Rabbit at Home, 1895; Sister Jane, Her Friends and Acquaintances, 1896; Georgia from the Invasion of De Soto to Recent Times, 1896; Stories of Georgia, 1896; Aaron in the Wildwoods, 1897; Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War, 1898; Chronicles of Aunt Minerva Ann, 1899; Plantation Pageants, 1899; On the Wing of Occasions, 1900; Gabriel Tolliver, a Story of Reconstruction, 1902; Making of a Statesman, and Other Stories, 1902; Wally Wanderoon, 1903; Little Union Scout, 1904; Tar Baby and Other Rimes of Uncle Remus, 1904; Told by Uncle Remus; New Stories of the Old Plantation, 1905.
Constance Fenimore Woolson. (1840–1894.) The Old Stone House, 1873; Castle Nowhere, 1875; Lake-Country Sketches, 1875; Rodman the Keeper, 1880; Anne, 1882; East Angels, 1886; Jupiter Lights, 1889; Horace Chase, a Novel, 1894; The Front Yard and Other Italian Stories, 1895; Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories, 1896; Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu, 1896.
Charles Egbert Craddock. (1850——-.) In the Tennessee Mountains, 1884; Where the Battle Was Fought, 1885; Down the Ravine, 1885; The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, 1885; In the Clouds, 1886; The Story of Keedon Bluffs, 1887; The Despot of Broomsedge Cove, 1888; In the "Stranger People's" Country, 1891; His Vanished Star, 1894; The Phantoms of the Footbridge, 1895; The Mystery of Witchface Mountain, 1895; The Juggler, 1897; The Young Mountaineers, 1897; The Story of Old Fort Louden, 1899; The Bushwhackers and Other Stories, 1899; The Champion, 1902; A Specter of Power, 1903; Storm Center, 1905; The Frontiersman, 1905; The Amulet, 1906; The Windfall, 1907; The Fair Mississippian, 1908; Ordeal—A Mountain Story of Tennessee, 1912; Raid of the Guerrilla, 1912; The Story of Duciehurst, 1914.
Sarah Barnwell Elliott. The Felmeres, 1880; A Simple Heart, 1886; Jerry, 1890; John Paget, 1893; The Durket Sperret, 1897; An Incident and Other Happenings, 1899; Sam Houston, 1900; The Making of Jane, 1901; His Majesty's Service and Other Plays.
Harry Stillwell Edwards. (1855——-.) Two Runaways and Other Stories, 1889; Sons and Fathers, 1896; The Marbeau Cousins, 1898; His Defense, and Other Stories, 1898.