The Project Gutenberg EBook of James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and
Work, by Macmillan Company

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Title: James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work

Author: Macmillan Company

Release Date: June 27, 2008 [EBook #25915]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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James Lane Allen

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK

WITH PORTRAIT

The Macmillan Company
66 Fifth Avenue, New York

NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

JAMES LANE ALLEN

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK

While "_The Choir Invisible_" was primarily a love story, the setting
in which its action moved was historical. Apart from the masterly
handling of human passion and the harmony of thought and expression
with which he has treated the larger and deeper movements of life, it
is probably Mr. Allen's ability to picture forth the early settlement
of Kentucky that has given his writings so solid a foundation in the
literary affections of English speaking people.

The fascination that "_The Choir Invisible_" has had for so many
thousands of readers is assuredly due as much to the author's faithful
historic treatment of the mighty stream of migration which had begun to
spread through the jagged channels of the Alleghanies over the then
unknown illimitable West as to his power to tell an absorbing story.
When "_The Choir Invisible_" appeared, this perhaps most fascinating
period of early American history had not been used as a background of
his story by any great master of fiction, and it requires no very keen
literary insight to discover the sources of the popularity which has
been accorded to the four or five recent novels, each of which has for
its setting a period in our history whose glamour has touched our
hearts and stirred our imaginations.

Contemporary judgment is singularly unanimous in placing Mr. Allen in
the front rank of American novelists, and it may not be