Dedication
TO LOUIS BEVIER, PH.D., LITT.D. AND LOUIS BEVIER, JR.
Contents
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells, the foremost American novelist of his generation, was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837. Most of his many novels have been realistic and sympathetic studies of contemporary American life. For some years he has written “The Editor’s Easy Chair” in Harper’s Magazine. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, and in 1915 the National Institute of Arts and Letters awarded him its Gold Medal “For distinguished work in fiction.” The Daughter of the Storage and Years of My Youth are his latest books.
Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Norris was born in San Francisco, California, July 16, 1880. She is the wife of Charles Gilman Norris, himself a writer and the brother of the late Frank Norris. Among Mrs. Norris’s best-known novels are Mother, The Story of Julia Page, and The Heart of Rachel.
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, July 29, 1869. A prolific and brilliant writer, he has scored many successes of different types, being the author of the romantic drama Monsieur Beaucaire, and of many novels dealing with contemporary Middle-Western life. Recently he has, in Seventeen and the “Penrod” stories, given his attention to the comedies and tragedies of American youth.
Montague Glass
Montague Glass was born at Manchester, England, July 23, 1877. Coming in his youth to the United States, he brought into American fiction a new type—that of the metropolitan Jewish-American business man. His Potash and Perlmutter and Abe and Mawruss have given him a European as well as an American reputation.
Rex Beach
Rex Beach was born at Atwood, Michigan, September 1, 1877. His novels deal chiefly with the West and the North, and his favorite theme is adventurous life in the open. Among his best-known books are The Spoilers, The Silver Horde, and Rainbow’s End.
Robert W. Chambers
Robert W. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York, May 26, 1865. One of the most widely read writers of his time, he has given his attention chiefly to English and American society, making it the theme of a large number of novels, among which may be mentioned The Fighting Chance, Japonette, and Athalie.
James Lane Allen
James Lane Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky, in 1849. In 1886 he gave up his profession of teaching to devote his attention to literature. Many of his novels deal with the South. Of them perhaps The Kentucky Cardinal and The Choir Invisible are best known.
Harry Leon Wilson
Harry Leon Wilson was born in Oregon, Illinois, May 1, 1867. He was co-author with Booth Tarkington of The Man from Home, and his Bunker Bean and Ruggles of Red Gap have given him a great reputation for irresistible and peculiarly American humor.
Edward S. Martin
Edward Sandford Martin was born in Willowbrook, Owasco, New York, January 2, 1856. His keen yet sympathetic observation of modern life finds expression in essays, many of which have been used editorially in Life. Several volumes of his essays have been published, among which may be mentioned The Luxury of Children, and Some Other Luxuries and Reflections of a Beginning Husband.
Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 26, 1868. He has been until recently a professor at the University of Chicago. He is a critic and a writer of realistic novels. The Web of Life, The Common Lot, Together, and Clark’s Field are novels that show Mr. Herrick’s questioning attitude toward some modern social institutions.
Arthur Guiterman
Arthur Guiterman was born of American parents in Vienna, Austria, November 28, 1871. He is a writer of deft and humorous light verse, of which a volume was recently published under the title The Laughing Muse. He contributes a weekly rhymed review to Life.
George Barr McCutcheon
George Barr McCutcheon was born on a farm in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, July 26, 1866. He is a short-story writer and novelist, devoting himself chiefly to tales of adventure. Beverley of Graustark and the volumes that succeeded it have gained him many admirers among lovers of romance.
Frank H. Spearman
Frank H. Spearman was born at Buffalo, New York, September 6, 1859. He is known both as a short-story writer and a writer of articles on economic topics. His novels are founded chiefly on themes dealing with the great industrial enterprises of the West, especially the railroads. The best known of these are The Daughter of a Magnate and The Strategy of Great Railroads.
Will N. Harben
Will N. Harben, who was born in Dalton, Georgia, July 5, 1858, began his career in business in the South. His entrance into literature began with the assistant editorship of the Youth’s Companion. He had gained a distinctive place as an interpreter of phases of Southern life in the company which includes Cable, Harris, and Johnston. His novels include Pole Baker, Ann Boyd, Second Choice, and many others.
John Erskine
John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, 1879. He is Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia University, the author of many text-books and critical works, of Actæon and Other Poems and of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays.
John Burroughs
John Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, 1837. He taught school in his early years, and held for a time a clerkship in the United States Treasury. Since 1874 he has devoted himself to literature and fruit culture. Among his well-known “Nature” books may be noted Wake Robin, Bird and Bough, and Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt.
Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia, April 22, 1874. Her novels, among which may be mentioned The Voice of the People, The Romance of a Plain Man, and Life and Gabriella, deal chiefly with social and psychological problems, and their scenes are for the most part in the southern part of the United States.
Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. She has served as a saleswoman and as a waitress and crossed the Atlantic in the steerage to get material for her short stories of the life of the working-woman, selections of which have been published with the titles Just Around the Corner and Every Soul Hath Its Song.
Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, February 9, 1874. She is prominently identified with vers libre, imagisme, and other ultra-modern poetic tendencies. She has published a volume of essays on modern French poetry and three books of poems, of which Men, Women, and Ghosts is the most recent.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, December 22, 1869. He has written plays, but is chiefly known for his poems, most of them studies of character. His most recent volume is Merlin: A Poem.
Josephine Preston Peabody
Josephine Preston Peabody was born in New York City. She won the Stratford-on-Avon Prize for her poetic drama The Piper. She has published many books of verse, one of which, called Harvest Moon, deals chiefly with woman’s tragic share in the Great War. She is the wife of Prof. Lionel Simeon Marks of Harvard.
Charles Rann Kennedy
Charles Rann Kennedy was born at Derby, England, February 14, 1871. His plays, dealing with social and religious questions, include The Servant in the House, The Terrible Meek, The Idol-Breakers, and The Rib of the Man, his latest work.
Percy Mackaye
Percy MacKaye was born in New York City, March 16, 1875. He has written many poems and plays, and has been especially identified with the production of community pageants and masques, having written and directed the St. Louis Civic Masque in 1914, and the Shakespeare Masque in New York City in 1916. Among his published works may be mentioned The Scarecrow, Jeanne d’Arc, Sappho and Phaon and Anti-Matrimony (plays) and Uriel and Other Poems.