Chapter Chapter 7 of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

added to the literary reputation of the Hoosier state are: Newton Booth Tarkington (born 1869), author of The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), The Two Vanrevels (1902), Cherry (1903), The Conquest of Canaan (1905), The Turmoil (1915), together with the Penrod stories and Seventeen; Charles Major (1856-1913), whose very popular romance, When Knighthood was in Flower, appeared in 1898; Meredith Nicholson (born 1866), author of several romantic narratives¹ of which The House of a Thousand Candles (1905) and The Port of Missing Men (1907) are prominent; and George Barr McCutcheon (born 1866), whose Graustark (1900), Craneycrow (1902), and Beverly of Graustark (1904) are best known. Here also should be included the name of the versatile humorist George Ade (born 1866), whose first literary successes, Artie, Pink Marsh, Doc Horne, etc., were produced while Mr. Ade was writing on the staff of a Chicago newspaper (1890-1900).

The West in General.

Captain Charles King (born at Albany, New York, 1844), a retired army officer, residing in Milwaukee, is the author of a long list of tales, the material of which is mainly drawn from military life. These include The Colonel's Daughter (1883), The Deserter (1887), Captain Blake (1892), The General's Double (1897), and many more. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1848-1894), a descendant of James Fenimore Cooper, was born in New Hampshire, but her home in later life was at Cleveland, Ohio. Her summers were usually spent on the shores of Lake Superior, or at Mackinac; she resided also in Florida. Her principal novels are: Castle Nowhere (1875), Anne (1882), East Angels (1886), and Jupiter Lights (1889). Mary Hallock Foote (born in New York, 1847) lived for some years in Colorado, California, and Idaho, accompanying her husband, a civil engineer. Her most successful novels deal realistically with the life of the mining camp and the hills. These are The Led Horse Claim (1883), John Bodewin's Testimony (1886), and Coeur d' Alène (1894).

Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902), a native of Ohio, later a resident of Illinois, was the author of several interesting historical novels for the most part concerned with historic epochs in the region of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and in the valleys of the Mississippi and the Illinois. It was The Romance of Dollard (1889) which began the series of her works -- a series which owed its inception to the fascinating narratives of Francis Parkman. Old Kaskaskia (1893) and The White Islander (1893), The Lady of Fort St. John (1892) and The Little Renault (1897) are vigorous narratives of romantic adventure. Mrs. Catherwood's last work, Lazarre (1901), is based on the tradition which identifies the Dauphin of France, who disappeared mysteriously from Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, with a lad in America who went by the name of Eleazar Williams and was reputed of royal birth.

Alice French, "Octave Thanet" (born in Massachusetts, 1850), is a resident of Davenport, Iowa. A part of the year she makes her home in a quiet spot in Arkansas. Both places serve as setting in some of her stories. Miss French is a realist; the relations between labor and capital have proved interesting and effective material in her hands. Among her works are: Knitters in the Sun (1887), Expiation (1890), Otto the Knight (1893), Stories of a Western Town (1893), The Heart of Toil (1898), The Man of the Hour (1905), The Lion's Share (1907), By Inheritance (1910), and A Step on the Stair (1913).

A Chicago group.

Henry Blake Fuller (born at Chicago, 1857) has ably represented the western metropolis in modern fiction. Beginning his literary career with two fantastic romances, The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani (1891) and The Chatelaine of La Trinité, Mr. Fuller (1892) next appeared as a realistic novelist of keen vision and serious purpose. He portrayed some interesting phases of Chicago society in The Cliff Dwellers (1893), and With the Procession (1895). The Last Refuge (1901) is in line with his earlier volumes, romantic, whimsical, and strongly symbolistic.

Hamlin Garland (born 1860), although a resident in the East, closely identified with Chicago, is a realist in principle, although some of his more recent work is softened by touches of romanticism. Mr. Garland's first publication, Main Travelled Roads (1890), was a volume of short stories realistic and somewhat