Mr. Stockton and Richard Stockton, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, are descended from the same ancestor, Richard Stockton, who came from England in 1680 and settled in Burlington County, New Jersey.
Much fine and interesting criticism from various directions, has been called out by Mr. Stockton's works.
Edmund Gosse, the well-known Professor of Literature in England, said just before leaving our shores:
"I think Mr. Stockton one of the most remarkable writers in this country. I think his originality, his extraordinary fantastic genius, has not been appreciated at all. People talk about him as if he were an ordinary purveyor of comicality. I do not want to leave this country without giving my personal tribute, if that is worth anything, to his genius."
"More than half of Mr. Stockton's readers, without doubt", says another critic, "think of him merely as the daintiest of humorists; as a writer whose work is entertaining in an unusual degree, rather than weighed in a critical scale, or considered seriously as a part of the literary expression of his time".
It is acknowledged that Americans are masters, at the present day, of the art of writing short stories and these, as a rule, are like the French, distinctly realistic. In this art Mr. Stockton excels. Among his short stories, "The Bee Man of Orn" and "The Griffin and the Minor Canon" represent his power of fancy. "The Hunting Expedition" in "Prince Hassak's March" is particularly jolly, and in "The Stories of the Three Burglars", we find a specimen of his realistic treatment. In the last, he makes the young house-breaker, who is an educated man, say: "I have made it a rule never to describe anything I have not personally seen and experienced. It is the only way, otherwise we can not give people credit for their virtues or judge them properly for their faults." Upon this, Aunt Martha exclaims: "I think that the study of realism may be carried a great deal too far. I do not think there is the slightest necessity for people to know anything about burglars." And later she says, referring to this one of the three: "I have no doubt, before he fell into his wicked ways, he was a very good writer and might have become a novelist or a magazine author, but his case is a sad proof that the study of realism is carried too far."
No critic seems to have observed or noticed the very remarkable manner in which Mr. Stockton renders the negro dialect on the printed page. In this respect he quite surpasses Uncle Remus or any other writer of negro folk-lore. He spells the words in such a way as to give the sense and sound to ears unaccustomed to negro talk as well as to those accustomed to it. This we especially realize in "The Late Mrs. Null".
But besides the qualities we have noticed in Mr. Stockton's writings, there is a subtle fragrance of purity that exhales from one and all, which is in contrast to much of the novel-writing and story-telling of the present day. We have reason to welcome warmly to our homes and to our firesides, one who, by his pure fun and drollery, can charm us so completely as to make us forget, for a time, the serious problems and questions which agitate and confront the thinking men and women of this generation.
So varied and voluminous are the writings of Mr. Stockton, they may be grouped as Juveniles, Novels, Novelettes and Collected Short Stories. Besides, there are magazine stories constantly appearing, and still to be collected. Most prominent among the volumes are "The Lady or The Tiger?"; "Rudder Grange" and its sequel, "The Rudder Grangers Abroad"; "The Late Mrs. Null"; "The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine"; "The Hundredth Man"; "The Great War Syndicate"; "Ardis Claverden"; "Stories of the Three Burglars"; "The House of Martha" and "The Squirrel Inn".
After considering what Mr. Stockton has accomplished and the place which by his genius and industry he has made for himself in Literature, we do not find it remarkable that in July, 1890, he was elected by the readers of The Critic into the ranks of the Forty Immortals.