HAROLD FREDERIC
(1856-)
r. Frederic was born in Utica, New York, August 19th, 1856. He spent his boyhood in that neighborhood, and was educated in its schools. The rural Central New York of a half-century ago was a region of rich farms, of conservative ideas, and of strong indigenous types of character. These undoubtedly offered unconscious studies to the future novelist.
Harold Frederic
Like many of his guild he began writing on a newspaper, rising by degrees from the position of reporter to that of editor. The drill and discipline taught him to make the most of time and opportunity, and he contrived leisure enough to write two or three long stories. Working at journalism in Utica, Albany, and New York, in 1884 he became chief foreign correspondent of the New York Times, making his headquarters in London, where he has since lived.
Mr. Frederic's reputation rests on journalistic correspondence of the higher class, and on his novels, of which he has published six. His stories are distinctively American. He has caught up contrasting elements of local life in the eastern part of the United States, and grouped them with ingenuity and power. His first important story was 'Seth's Brother's Wife,' originally appearing as a serial in Scribner's Magazine. Following this came 'The Lawton Girl,' a study of rustic life; 'In the Valley,' a semi-historical novel, turning on aspects of colonial times along the Mohawk River; 'The Copperhead,' a tale of the Civil War; 'Mukena and Other Stories,' graphic character sketches, displaying humor and insight; 'The Damnation of Theron Ware,' the most serious and carefully studied of his books; and 'March Hares,' a sketch of contemporary society.
A student of the life about him, possessing a dramatic sense and a saving grace of humor, Mr. Frederic in his fiction is often photographic and minute in detail, while he does not forget the importance of the mass which the detail is to explain or embellish. He likes to deal with types of that mixed population peculiar to the farming valleys of Central New York,—German, Irish, and American,—bringing out by contrast their marked social and individual traits. Not a disciple of realism, his books are emphatically "human documents."