The Mentor
“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”
| Vol. 1 | No. 25 |
AMERICAN NOVELISTS
HENRY JAMES WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS THOMAS NELSON PAGE |  | JAMES LANE ALLEN WINSTON CHURCHILL OWEN WISTER |
By HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
This group of distinguished novelists may be divided into foursmaller groups, not only in time, but in selection and treatment ofsubjects. Mr. James and Mr. Howells are now the senior members ofthe literary fraternity in this country, and have not only Americanbut European reputations. Only three novelists before them attainedthis distinction. The earliest of these, Cooper, is still read inmany parts of the world, and in little German villages boys callthemselves “Cooper Indians,” and play at oldtime savage warfare.The author of the “Leatherstocking Tales” wrote the first originalAmerican novel, and Hawthorne wrote the first American romance. Thefirst described the manners and customs of a people whom he knewat first hand, but whom Europe knew only by hearsay; the secondanalyzed the motives and described the workings of the Puritanspirit, and showed how the consciousness of sin worked itself outin the Puritan character. The theme was new, and the manner oftreating it was both effective and beautiful—and Hawthorne remainsthe most artistic writer this country has produced.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
The next novelist to whom Europe paid attention was Mrs. Stowe.“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was like a great torch held up over a fiercelydisputed field; it showed men and women living under all conditionsof slavery, paternal and humane on one hand, and commercial andcruel on the other. It made a drama of a political issue, and wasread with bated breath by a million people. It interested Europebecause it was a powerful story dealing with a situation that hadattracted the attention of the whole Western world; it was at oncetranslated into several languages, and could be found from Londonto Constantinople.
HOME OF HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. HARTFORD, CONN.
HENRY JAMES
When Mr. James began writing a generation ago there had been noAmerican fiction of a high order for twenty years or more, andthe country had grown rapidly in experience and knowledge. Mr.James showed this more cosmopolitan attitude toward the world,and his style had a quality which was new in our fiction. It wasclear in those days; it had great flexibility and capacity forconveying fine distinctions and delicate shadings of thought; ithad a tone of maturity which was lacking in the earlier writers,and it was the medium of expression of a thoroughly trained manto whom writing was a