Isaac Mitchell.—At Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1811, was published in two volumes “The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, an American Tale, Founded on Fact.” Of the author of this Gothic romance, Isaac Mitchell,[5] little is known save that he was successively the editor of The Farmer’s Journal, The Political Barometer, and The Republican Crisis, all of Albany, New York, and that after losing his position through political changes, he moved to Poughkeepsie. The story was later abridged and compressed into one volume by Daniel Jackson, Jr. (Mitchell’s name disappearing from the title-page), and in this form was long popular throughout America; Mr. Reed thinks that for nearly a quarter of a century a new edition appeared practically every year. The narrative is full of elaborate descriptions of nature.
Washington Irving.—In general Irving will be discussed rather with the essayists than with the novelists; but his stories and tales must be considered here. They have contributed largely if not chiefly to his enduring reputation. His first book, “Knickerbocker’s History of New York” (1809), in which he works out a grotesquely humorous drama of the Dutch fathers wrestling with the weighty problems of statecraft, is of course in the main fictitious. No doubt it is at times pretentious or overdone, and the humour is occasionally a little too broad for the decorum of to-day; but the irrepressible spirit of comedy, the delightfully burlesqued descriptions of stolid Dutch character, the vivid though leisurely narrative, give it a supreme place in our humorous literature. “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are doubtless the most read parts of “The Sketch Book” and have long since become classics; no more faithful narratives of quaint old Dutch life have ever been written. In them the boisterous exuberance of the “History” gives way to a more graceful, refined, and mature style, which invests the homely simplicity and contentment of colonial Dutch life with a kind of idyllic charm. Only a little less successful were Irving’s other stories of early New Amsterdam life—notably “The Money-Diggers” in “Tales of a Traveller,” and “Dolph Heyliger” in “Bracebridge Hall.” Inferior because more conventional and less spontaneous are the first three parts of the “Tales”; yet even here, in dealing with the sentimental and the terrible, Irving compares favourably with other story-tellers of his day. In the stories scattered through “The Alhambra,” Irving showed clearly that he had found another source of inspiration in the romantic legends of Spain and the Moors—legends full of Oriental mystery and of the splendid glories of old Spain, so charmingly and truthfully set forth that the Spaniards themselves spoke of him as “the poet Irving.” And “poet” he is in the large sense that he has created imperishable scenes and characters in that realm of romance in which we delight to wander, far from the prosaic world and the madding crowd.
James Kirke Paulding.—A contrast with Irving in more than one respect is afforded by James K. Paulding (1778–1860), the friend and collaborator of Washington Irving and the brother-in-law of William Irving. The author of “The Sketch Book” gave his whole life to the profession of letters; for Paulding, on the other hand, literary composition was only an avocation. The genial humour of Irving, too, differs from the satirical and ironical vein too often indulged in by his friend. Born in Dutchess County, New York, Paulding went to New York City while a young man and became associated with the Irvings in writing Salmagundi, the success of which gave Paulding confidence in himself and led him to further literary efforts. “The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan” (1812), a loosely constructed and amateurish satire in the style of Arbuthnot, became very popular both in America and in England. “Koningsmarke, the Long Finne” (1823), now remembered only for the familiar assertion that “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” was a burlesque on Cooper’s “Pioneers.” Paulding’s most successful work, which deserves to live, was “The Dutchman’s Fireside” (1831), in which are charming descriptions of quaint Dutch customs and personages, of the picturesque scenery of the Hudson, and of the vast expanse of wilderness that stretched to the westward. In general, however, Paulding’s work was characterised by a too harsh and obstreperous Americanism, an immoderate and amusing hostility to foreigners, and a carelessness of workmanship which prevented it from enduring long.
Samuel Woodworth.—As a curiosity must here be mentioned the long-forgotten “Champions of Freedom” (1816) of Samuel Woodworth (1785–1842). It was his one essay in fiction; a history of the War of 1812 in the style of a romance. It must be described as a chaotic miscellany, blending wild romance with commonplace realism, and conducting the reader from ballroom to battlefield and back again with the least possible suspicion of method or motive.
John Neal.—Born in Portland, Maine, and beginning life as a shop-boy in Boston, John Neal (1793–1876) became in turn a wholesale dry-goods merchant, a lawyer, and a voluminous critic, poet, and novelist. He boasted that in thirty-six years he had written enough altogether to fill a hundred octavo volumes; yet to-day he is little more than a name. His first novel, “Keep Cool,” which he afterward spoke of with justice as a “paltry, contemptible affair,” appeared in 1817. His best novels are “Seventy-Six” (1823), a lively story of the Revolution, “Rachel Dyer” (1828), a story of the Salem Witchcraft, and “The Down-Easters” (1833), an extravagant tale which deals with the ways of steamboat passengers, and into which he manages to introduce plenty of horrors. Neal has been well styled “the universal Yankee, whittling his way through creation, with a half-genius for everything, a robust genius for nothing.” He is said to have been the originator of the woman’s suffrage movement, the first person to establish a gymnasium in America, and the first to encourage Edgar A. Poe.[6]
James Fenimore Cooper.—The first American to win universal recognition as a powerful novelist was James Fenimore Cooper. Born at Burlington, New Jersey, on September 15, 1789, of English Quaker and Swedish parentage, he was taken, when a year old, to the Central New York wilderness, where his father, having become the owner of large tracts of land, had laid out the village of Cooperstown. Here, on the shores of the beautiful Otsego Lake, in a motley frontier settlement, the boy Cooper passed his earliest years. In due time entering the family of an Albany clergyman as a private pupil, Cooper proceeded in 1803 to Yale College, where he became a member of the class of 1806. An escapade in his third year led to his dismissal; after which he served a marine apprenticeship of a year and then entered the navy, serving as midshipman for nearly four years. In 1811, he married Susan A. De Lancey, a lady of Huguenot and Tory family, and a sister of Bishop De Lancey of Western New York; and at her request resigned his commission, to become an amateur farmer, successively at Mamaroneck, on Long Island Sound, at Cooperstown, and at Scarsdale, Westchester County, all in New York State. Thus he arrived at the age of thirty without having even dreamed of a career of authorship. One day, reading a novel descriptive of English society, he impatiently threw down the book and exclaimed that he could write a better story himself. Challenged by his wife to do so, he wrote and published “Precaution” (1820), a dull and conventional story of English social life, purporting to be the work of an Englishman. Although the novel was not very successful, his friends urged Cooper to try again, and this time to write of scenes of which he had some personal knowledge. The publication of “The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground,” in December, 1821, marks the beginning of a long series of successes. “The Spy” met with a large sale both in America and in England. It was soon translated into most of the cultivated languages of Europe; and its popularity has never greatly waned. It is a story of the American Revolution, in which the patriotic hero, Harvey Birch, signally aids the American cause and exhibits a rare combination of the spy and the gentleman.
During the twenty-nine years remaining to Cooper, he produced thirty-two further volumes, chiefly romances. Of these, many are now rarely read, but the following have retained their popularity for successive generations:
“The Spy,” already referred to.
“The Leatherstocking Tales,” comprising (in the chronological order not of their production, but of the narrative):
“The Deerslayer, or The First War Path,” 1841.