From the first list were selected the stories here offered. Again, out of this smaller number three were voted the annual prizes. To “Prelude,” by Edgar Valentine Smith, goes the first award of $500; to “A Friend of Napoleon,” by Richard Connell, the second, of $250; to “Towers of Fame,” by Elizabeth Irons Folsom, the special prize of $100 for the best brief story under 3,000 words. One member wished to record a preference for “The Distant Street” as first winner, and also urged Richard Connell’s “A New York Knight” for second winner. With one exception, and with the result stated, every story on the first list was considered in making the awards. The exception is the work of Frances Gilchrist Wood. The Committee having indicated their appreciation of its high merit, Mrs. Wood, herself a member of the Committee, consented to a place on the lists; but, as a matter of course, she refused to enter any one of her stories as a candidate for the awards.
As magazines increase in number, good stories increase but not in equal ratio. The reason, which will commend itself to all readers, is apparent to any reader who has served a term in the editorial office. A story is rejected on one of several counts: it falls below the standard of the magazine; it is not of the type suited to the purpose and the audience of the magazine; it comes at a time when the vaults are overstocked. If superlatively excellent, it may overthrow both the second and third barriers. But, let us say, it is rejected because it departs from type. It may develop a psychological struggle, an adventure of the soul, whereas the periodical to which it is offered prefers stories of physical adventure. Sent back, the script may be bought subsequently by a magazine of repute superior to the first. But make no mistake: the editor paying most to-day has the pick of the market. He has first chance, though he may not pick the best. He may leave ungathered a peach of a story, because he believes his readers like apples or plums. Editor Number Two may observe the fine fibre, the rare bloom, of the rejected fruit and serve it up to the gustatorially discerning. So the good story is salvaged. Stories below standard fall to publications implicitly serving readers of lighter, cheaper fiction. The inferior story, then, also ultimately finds an audience.[B] To read, to estimate, and to extract the superior stories from the inferior combine in a threefold task of increasing difficulty.
Seventy-five years ago the stream of literature flowed from England and the European continent to America. Examine the first issue of Harper’s Magazine.[C] You will find with few exceptions a collection of reprints. Dickens’s Household Words, the Dublin University Magazine, Bentley’s Miscellany, the Ladies’ Companion and the London Athenæum provide two serials, a long story complete, a brief tale or two, memoirs, comments on authors of the day—Jeffrey, Bowles, Wordsworth, George Sand—and translations from the German, besides other matter of irrelevance to this summary.
Lay aside Volume I of Harper’s, after observing that the volume continues the practice of the first number, and take down Volume I of Scribner’s. Appearing thirty-seven years later[D] and thirty-six years before 1923, it marks the apex of this three-quarter century period. The Table of Contents is practically all-American. There are Brander Matthews, Joel Chandler Harris, Dean N. S. Shaler, Octave Thanet, Margaret Crosby, Sarah Orne Jewett, Thomas Nelson Page, Harold Frederic, H. C. Bunner, Duncan Campbell Scott, “J. S.” of Dale, Professor Adams Sherman Hill, Arlo Bates. There are “Glimpses at the Diary of Gouverneur Morris,” rather than “Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans” (in the Harper’s of 1850). American periodical literature is established.
Consider, further, the situation to-day. In England you will find leading American periodicals in the English edition; you will find in Hutchinson’s, The Strand, Nash’s (published, all, in London) for instance, reprints of fiction first published in America by American authors, as well as stories by English authors published simultaneously, a little earlier, or a trifle later, in America.
“But,” asks one, “why state the obvious?” Because certain critics refuse to recognize the obvious, insisting on the sciolism, provincialism, poverty, and inadequacy of fiction in America. It is one thing to insist out of deference to dreams of greater achievement; it is quite another thing to insist out of subservience to the fashion which prompts negation and destruction, out of an inherent inability to acknowledge good in anything. The tentative data suggested above at least indicate the cosmopolitan appeal of American fiction.
Turn again to the first volume of Harper’s Magazine. You will find one page bearing the classic, “A Child’s Dream of a Star” (page 73); you will find “My Novel,” by Bulwer Lytton; and “Maurice Tiernay,” by Charles Lever. Will any magazine of June-November, 1923, carry similar survivals to 2000 A.D.? The answer is on the knees of the gods. But against the instances of novels of 1850, known at least to the specialist and perhaps to others, there are anecdotes and tales of matter and manner inferior to stories in the same magazine to-day.
Read the beginning of “Lettice Arnold” (page 13):
“Nay, my child,” said the pale, delicate, nervous woman, thus addressed by a blooming girl whose face beamed with every promise for future happiness, which health and cheerfulness, and eyes filled with warm affection could give, “Nay, my child, don’t talk so. You must not talk so. It is not to be thought of.”
Or read “Andrew Carson’s Money: A Story of Gold,” and mark the following passage: