Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote largely of Florida, its everglades, its orange-groves, its pine barrens. Read from East Angels.
Mary Hallock Foote used the scene of the early mining-camps as her theme, and has vivid pictures of life and romance there. Read from The Led Horse Claim or The Chosen Valley.
Charles Egbert Craddock (Mary Murfree) has laid her plots in the Tennessee mountains. Her heroes are sturdy, uncouth, picturesque mountaineers, and her books are noted for the descriptions of scenery. Read from The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain or In the Clouds.
Grace E. King writes of the life of the Creoles in New Orleans. In her Balcony Stories and Monsieur Motte we have the fragrance and the languor of the South. Read a Balcony story.
Sarah Orne Jewett was one of the first to choose New England as her field of work. Her style is peculiarly delicate and refined. She wrote of the people with truth and sympathy, without a touch of satire. A White Heron and The Country of the Pointed Firs are among her beautiful stories; read from the latter.
Ellen Glasgow has laid the scenes of her stories in the South, largely in Virginia. Her themes are unusual and worked out in a broad, unhurried way. The Voice of the People, The Deliverance, The Battle-Ground, and Ancient Law are all worth reading. Select from The Deliverance.
Helen Martin in Tillie, A Mennonite Maid and Elsie Singmaster in several stories have both taken the quaint Pennsylvania Dutch to write of, with their remoteness of life from the world.
IX—SHORT STORIES
Of late years, short stories, largely written by women, have crowded our magazines. It is impossible to choose more than a few for a program, but club-women may add to those suggested all their favorites, and bring in short stories to read at one meeting. In addition to the older writers, Rebecca Harding Davis, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and others, take the following:
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, though the author of several novels, is perhaps our greatest short-story writer. Her characters, especially those drawn from New England rural life, are reproduced with marvelous fidelity. She understands their foibles, their oddities, and writes of them with fidelity and humor. A New England Nun is called her best book; read any story from it.