Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864
Born in Salem, MA, Hawthorne is one of the great New England writers, author of classics such as The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, as well as numerous short stories. His work draws on his extensive knowledge of Puritain New England and American colonial history. Many critical writers have noted his influence on Sarah Orne Jewett (click on link below for examples/bibliography). However, Jewett rejects Hawthorne's use of allegory and the supernatural for realism. Hawthorne's main themes include sin and guilt, the effects of isolation, and the effect of the past on the present.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811-1896
Harriet Beecher Stowe was raised in Connecticut, and after spending several years in Ohio, moved to New Brunswick, Maine in 1850. Most famous for Uncle Tom's Cabin, a powerful anti-slavery classic, Stowe also wrote other novels and stories, frequently published in the Atlantic Monthly. Among these, The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), and Oldtown Folks (1869), depict lives of everyday people in Mainne and Massachusetts, respectively. In these later writings, Stowe used vernacular language and incorporated local tales into her stories, which created engaging portraits of the region and its characters.. Her writing influenced not only Sarah Orne Jewett, but also other New England writers such as Mary Wilkins Freeman.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 1835-1910
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was one of the most influential personalities in American literature during the last half of the 19th century. His novel Huckleberry Finn is considered The Great American Novel. He is famous for his facility with the English language, for capturing the feeling and style of oral narrative in his prose. He wrote about the details of common people, and in doing so, attempted to probe the emotional and moral state of humankind. W. D. Howells, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was a lifelong friend.
http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/twainwww.html
Mark Twain Resources
on the World Wide Web
includes biographical information, criticism, and etexts of fiction,
speeches, etc.
http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/fiction/puddnhead-wilson.txt
Etext
of Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
William Dean Howells was one of the most influential individuals in the American literary scene of his time. He published novels, plays, and criticism, but his influence showed most in his roles as essayist and editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Howells advocated the "truthful treatment of material," found in the objective depiction of familiar places and ordinary lives. He believed in using realistic, unromantic narrative language and allowing characters to give voice in the language of common folk. He championed many of the Realists and Naturalists of the latter nineteenth century. In his own writing he often dealt with the consequences of industrialization and secularization on American society and specific people.
The Rise of Silas Lapham, published in 1885, is Howells' most famous novel. Although Howells knew virtually everyone connected with literature, two of his closest friends were Mark Twain and Henry James.
http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/howells/index.html
William
Dean Howells Society homepage
Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914?
Often called "Bitter Bierce," this author used his satires
and short stories to show the horrors of war and of self-deception. An experimenter,
Bierce pioneered narrative techniques such as stream of consciousness. His short
story, "Chickamauga," with its harsh, graphic description of the aftermath
of battle, is most commonly anthologized. Bierce went to Mexico in 1913 to locate
Pancho Villa and disappeared shortly after.
At first glance, James; writing seems quite different from that of the Realists and Naturalists. Certainly he does not seem to use the voice of the "common man," but uses intricate style and technique. However, James was a master of realism on a social and psychological level, and this type of exploration occurs in much of his best work. He also was at the forefront of pulling the narrator out of the work--showing rather than telling--an important development in narrative technique.
George Washington Cable, 1844-1925
Noted as a local color realist, Cable wrote about people in the Louisiana area in which he lived. His early collection of stories, Old Creole Days, helped to make his reputation. His first two novels, The Grandissimes and Madame Delphine, portrayed interracial relations and exploitation of African Americans, although some Creole readers felt the books offered a caricature of their community rather than a sensitive, realistic portrayal.
Jewett was in South Berwick, Maine, the daughter of a doctor and granddaughter of a sea captain. She began to write and publish while still in her teens, and became a popular writer at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was championed by William Dean Howells, influential editor of the Atlantic Monthly. Like contemporary female writers Freeman and Chopin, Jewett was labeled a local color writer; today, however, her best work is seen as transcending that genre. Look throughout this site for additional biographical and critical information on Sarah Orne Jewett.
Long considered a local color writer, Chopin was a widow in St. Louis who wrote of the Louisiana she had known during her marriage. Chopin tackled many taboo subjects in her writing, including adultery, miscegenation, and alcoholism. She often wrote of the struggle for women to successfully be both wives and mothers and also whole persons. In fact, the outraged furor over her treatment of this theme in her masterpiece The Awakening, and its subsequent suppression, helped to end her writing career. She admired Sarah Orne Jewett, and helped to make her area of Louisiana as well known to readers as Jewett's Maine coast.
Mary Wilkins Freeman, 1852-1930
Born herself in Randolph, Massachusetts, Freeman wrote mostly about the ordinary women and other inhabitants of New England. She identified with the hard work of her characters, as she claimed to write not for the love of it, but to survive. Unlike Jewett's more optimistic view of the fortitude of New England women, Freeman seemed more pessimistic in her depictions of women's opportunities and lives. Like Jewett, she has often incorrectly been relegated to local color writer status.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1860-1935
Throughout his career Garland never deviated from his advocacy of "local color" as a distinctive feature of the fiction he admired in the 1880s and 1890s. Simply put, "local color" is an attempt to reproduce facts of immediate present, the texture of life which writer has experienced, with a focus on American life of a given locale in an effort to foster a distinctively American literature through the depiction of a region's characters, customs, and textures of life. Like many realists, Garland believed that one can only write what one knows.
http://www2.uncwil.edu/english/newlin/garland/
"Hamlin Garland"
includes biographical information, photos, film clip, etc.
http://www2.uncwil.edu/english/newlin/garland/coule.htm
Hamlin Garland's
definition and opinion of local color
http://perrynet.stark.k12.oh.us/schoolsmain/schools/PantherWeb/library/language/wharton.html Edith Wharton Home Page, includes biography, list of works, photos, additional links, etc.
http://www.gutenberg.org/gutenberg/by-auth/wh1.html
Etext of some
of Wharton's works, including House of Mirth
Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton), 1865-1914
Crane was encouraged in his early career by realist Hamlin Garland and editor William Dean Howells. His first break came with the publication of The Red Badge of Courage in 1894. Throughout his short career he dealt with the theme of nature's indifference to humanity's struggles. His work offers the epitome of pessimistic naturalism.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~mmaynard/Crane/crane.html
"Stephen
Crane: Man, Myth, and Legend" from the Univ. of Texas at Austin
includes biography, sound clips, links, major themes, and literary techniques
Theodore Dreiser grew up in the Midwest and began writing in the field of journalism. His first novel, Sister Carrie, was a landmark in naturalistic fiction.
http://main.ipc.fukushima-u.ac.jp/~p283/dreiser.html
A
Dreiser Discussion Forum Site
Jack London was born in California to a young single mother. He was adopted and raised by the man his mother married, John London. He began publishing in 1899 and was an immediate success. Much of his work deals with social differences such as class and gender; his Alaskan stories are probably his best known.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/
The
Jack London collection at Berkeley
includes biography, writings, images, bibliography, links, etc. Under "Writings,"
contains etext for several of London's works, including Call of the Wild
and "To Build a Fire"
http://edweb.sdsu.edu/Courses/EDTEC572/final_projects/JL_Pages/Jack_London.html
SanDiego
State University London lesson page
four online lessons involving reading essays and London's writings, following
links, and using the information to answer discussion questions.
