Chapter Novelists And Humorists of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

Realistic Fiction.

One of the famous novels of its time -- and still reckoned a classic by lovers of sentimental fiction -- was that tearful work The Wide, Wide World (1850), written by Susan Warner (1819-1885). Queechy followed in 1852. The Lamplighter (1854), by Maria S. Cummins, was another example of the sentimental novel, which enjoyed widespread popularity. But while these works of fiction had a large contemporary fame, they were altogether eclipsed by the production of another New England woman -- the most widely read and best known of all American novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was published in 1852.

Harriet B. Stowe, 1812-1896.

Harriet Beecher, one year older than her famous brother, Henry Ward, was the daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher, who was settled in the little town of Litchfield, Connecticut, when Harriet was born. She was a precocious child intellectually and emotionally. A part of her early life was spent in Cincinnati, whither, in 1832, her father had been called to become the president of a theological seminary. Here Harriet Beecher was married to Dr. Stowe in 1836. During this period of residence in the Ohio city, she visited friends in Kentucky and gained her knowledge of slavery, as she observed the institution there. In 1850, the Stowes removed to Brunswick, Maine, Dr. Stowe having been called to a professorship in Bowdoin College; and it was here that she wrote her novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared first as a serial in the National Era, the anti-slavery organ at Washington, with which Whittier was at one time associated. The history of this book is unique in American literature. It has been translated into more than forty languages. It was dramatized immediately, and still makes its melodramatic appeal from the stage -- to a larger audience than any other single play. Although severely handled by modern critics with reference both to its portrayal of slavery as an institution and to its artistic defects, the strong pathos of the novel and its humanitarian spirit appear to insure its literary immortality. It has been well said of Uncle Tom's Cabin that "a book that stirs the world and is instrumental in bringing on a civil war and freeing an enslaved race may well elicit the admiration of a more sophisticated generation."¹ Mrs. Stowe's next novel, Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), was also a story about slavery. In 1858, she began in the Atlantic Monthly a realistic story of colonial life, The Minister's Wooing. The Pearl of Orr's Island appeared in 1862. The novel,Agnes of Sorrento, published the same year, was the fruit of a European trip. For many readers, Mrs. Stowe's most attractive work appears in Oldtown Folks (1869), a realistic study of the quaint and wholesome New England character as she had known it intimately in childhood as well as in later life. After 1863, the Stowes lived in Hartford. The husband died in 1886; Mrs. Stowe survived, an invalid, until 1896.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), an indefatigable gleaner in many fields, won merited fame with his story, now classic, The Man without a Country, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863. A long series of tales and narratives -- mostly with a purpose -- includes the novel Philip Nolan's Friends (1876) and the religious romance, In His Name (1873). John Townsend Trowbridge (1827-1916) is a representative of the earlier generation, whose works were popular with old and young. His best-known novels are Neighbor Jackwood (1857) and Cudjo's Cave (1863). The narrative of Jack Hazard and his Fortunes (1871) began a series of entertaining stories for boys which long maintained their place in the affections of the New England youth.

Juvenile Fiction.

Indeed juvenile fiction flourished early in New England. The famous "Rollo" and "Lucy" books of Jacob Abbott (1803-1879), which began to appear about 1840, are now recalled as quaint examples of the old- fashioned children's books in which instruction was generously mixed with entertainment.

The "Jack Hazard" books were of a different type and were the delight of the younger generation that followed; so were the "Elm Island" stories written by Rev. Elijah Kellogg (1813-1901), like Jacob Abbott, a native of Maine. Mrs. Adeline D. T. Whitney (1824-1906), author of Faith Gartney's Girlhood (1863),