214 



FICTION, AMERICAN. 



ing the consolidation of the forces of the local 

 councils and district federations with all other 

 means of kindred character to press this measure. 

 A plan was approved for a " simultaneous mis- 

 sion " to be conducted for the whole country, in- 

 cluding the large and small towns, and, it was 

 hoped, the villages. It was to be an eight-days' 

 mission, which might in special cases be extended 

 to ten days. In London it was to be held from 

 Mmday, Jan. 27 (1901), to Sunday, Feb. 3, or 

 Tuesday, Feb. 5, and in the rest of the kingdom 

 from Sunday, Feb. 17, to Feb. 24 or 26. The mis- 

 sion is intended for all classes, and the list of 

 !i.i"ioners includes practically all those who are 

 regarded as the great leaders of the churches. A 

 resolution was adopted protesting against sacer- 

 dotal teaching, ceremonies, and practices, and af- 

 firming that in the opinion of the council neither 

 tin- doctrine nor the discipline of the Anglican 

 ( lnireh would be satisfactorily safeguarded until 

 it was disestablished, and its affairs were placed 

 under the government of its own members. 



FICTION, AMERICAN. The salient feature 

 of American literature in 1900, as in tue preceding 

 year, was the phenomenal success of certain novels, 

 all by American authors, of whom the majority 

 are newcomers in the field. Edgar Allan Poe fore- 

 saw the endless possibilities of the American 

 reading world, and planned, before the middle of 

 the century was reached, a popular magazine on 

 the lines later adopted by our great monthlies; 

 but even he presumably had no conception of the 

 more recent developments in cheap periodical litera- 

 ture, nor of the circulation of hundreds of thou- 

 sands of copies of novels, such as we have seen of 

 late. Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, the 

 first American novel that might have served as 

 a guidepost to his discerning mind, was not pub- 

 lished until a year after his death; Uncle Tom's 

 Cabin two years later; and to others the success 

 of neither of these books appears to have suggested 

 possibilities. They were rather regarded as un- 

 approachable exceptions, one of which was helped 

 by extraneous circumstances the conflict over 

 slavery which was to end in war. Even Edward 

 Bellamy's Looking Backward, and Lew Wallace's 

 Ben llur, with its record of nearly 750,000 copies 

 sold, seem to have been classified as sporadic ap- 

 pearances in the field. The idea that audiences 

 could be found for several novels at one time, 

 running well into the millions, was not born until 

 within the past two years. Reputations are now 

 made in a day, and bear fruit in a month ; whether 

 they will endure as do those of the older masters, 

 none of whom has as yet been approached in 

 workmanship, remains to be seen. The true artists 

 of the present day, with the exception of Stanley 

 J. Weyman and Anthony Hope Hawkins, do not 

 stand any longer in the first rank so far as cir- 

 culation is concerned. Mr. Howells, Henry James, 

 Mrs. Wharton, Miss Wilkins to name but a few, 

 nnd to restrict ourselves to American fiction are 

 left far behind in the matter of immediate popu- 

 larity, if not of enduring fame. 



Miiny theories have been advanced in explana- 

 tion of this unprecedented growth of the Amer- 

 ican reading public; and the warnings of the 

 croaker who sees in the vogue of the novel the 

 doom of true literature are, of course, heard in 

 the chorus. No single cause for the movement 

 can be assigned. It is the outcome of many de- 

 velopments in recent years, as diversified as the 

 style, subjects, and methods of the Im lunate au- 

 thors themselves. Publishers and public have in- 

 teracted upon each other in a complex and highly 

 interesting fashion, the former perfecting theiV 

 methods of reaching the multitudes of readers, 



hastening by legitimate means the spread of repu- 

 tations which formerly dribblea but slowly 

 through; the daily press, ever keenly aware of 

 new interests in its readers, has paid ever increas- 

 ing attention to things literary, no journal of any 

 standing being nowadays without its literary 

 editor and its " book page " ; and the international 

 copyright law has unquestionably been an influ- 

 ence in the fostering of the American author, by 

 giving him a fair field and an adequate return 

 for his labors. Moreover, the nation has pro- 

 gressed from union far toward a lasting unity, 

 the Spanish war having apparently the incontest- 

 able merit of adding the keystone to the edifice 

 all but rent in twain by internecine strife. Secure 

 in their present, and proud thereof, sanguine of 

 their great future, the people of the United States 

 have begun to cultivate their past, to take a new 

 interest in the beginnings that have led to so 

 great an achievement. In a period of historical 

 romance, the patriotic historical novel must needs 

 take a pre-eminent place. The national novel, 

 appearing at the time of the full consciousness 

 of an indivisible national feeling, was seen to fill 

 a deeply if not long felt want. Finally and this 

 is perhaps the fundamental cause that powerful 

 agency of modern democratic civilization, the 

 American public school, has begun to yield the 

 fruit once denied it culture; for the American 

 public buys not novels alone. The recent and 

 evidently permanent success of the innumerable 

 cheap but handsome reprints of the classics of 

 English literature, the many new editions of 

 Shakespeare, the constant demand for the different 

 home-reading series and popular scientific books, 

 for the numerous works on music and art, so 

 timely in their writing and launching, the interest 

 manifested in such writers as Spencer, Darwin, 

 Huxley, and Tyndall, far in excess of that shown 

 in the country whose glory they are, testify to 

 the healthy growth of culture in the United States. 

 Statistics of the sales of all these works are not 

 published, but they would amply prove, what is 

 the truth, that the preponderating mass of the 

 American public does not read for pleasure alone. 

 The success of all such books is not sudden and 

 phenomenal, comprised in the popularity of two 

 or even three years the life, with but few ex- 

 ceptions, of the present-day novel; it is gradual 

 and cumulative, resulting in the end in figures 

 fraught with meaning for him who knows how 

 to interpret them. 



In point of immediate numbers, however, fiction 

 overshadows at present all branches of literature 

 everywhere in the world ; nor is this fact to be 

 deplored when its growing national significance 

 is taken into consideration. In this country we 

 have passed during the last fifteen years through 

 a series of successive periods of foreign cults 

 Tolstoi and Turgeneff, Maupassant, Daudet, Bour- 

 get, and Zola, the Spanish writers and the Scandi- 

 navians, even the only notable child of tin- 

 Dutch sensitivist movement, Louis Couperus. But, 

 we have gradually forgotten them, as our o\\r 

 national school of fiction began to develop, a in 

 the national note of the schools of all these coun- 

 tries grew in volume. From England we stil 

 take, and probably shall always take, the best; 

 she has to give us, for our two literatures are 

 one in essence; but we shall read it for extraneous 

 reasons chiefly, for comparison, social and critical. 

 as a measure of growing or diminishing national 

 divergence. 



The growth of the national spirit in the world';} 

 fiction is remarkable because it is universal, 

 coincides with the awakening of national feeling 

 and the preoccupation with national affairs. Tho 



