veterans has been rich,
varied, often noteworthy in quality. But of all this it is too
soon to speak.

With regard to the fictional evolution on American soil, it is
clear that four great writers, excluding the living, separate
themselves from the crowd: Irving, Cooper, Poe and Hawthorne.
Moreover, two of these, Irving and Poe, are not novelists at
all, but masters of the sketch or short story. It will be best,
however, for our purpose to give them all some attention, for
whatever the form of fiction they used, they are all influential
in the development of the Novel.

Other authors of single great books may occur to the student,
perhaps clamoring for admission to a company so select. Yet he
is likely always to come back and draw a dividing line here.
Bret Harte, for instance, is dead, and in the short story of
western flavor he was a pioneer of mark, the founder of a genre:
probably no other writer is so significant in his field. But
here again, although he essayed full-length fiction, it was not
his forte. So, too, were it not that Mark Twain still cheers the
land of the living with his wise fun, there would be for the
critic the question, is he a novelist, humorist or essayist. Is
"Roughing It" more typical of his genius than "Tom Sawyer" or
"Huckleberry Finn"? How shall we characterize "Puddin' Head
Wilson"? Under what category shall we place "A Yankee at the
Court of King Arthur" and "Joan of Arc"? The query reminds us
once more that literature means personality as well as literary
forms and that personality is more important than are they. And
again we turn away regretfully (remembering that this is an
attempt to study not fiction in all its manifestations, but the
Novel) from the charming short stories--little classics in their
kind--bequeathed by Aldrich, and are almost sorry that our
judgment demands that we place him first as a poet. We think,
too, of that book so unique in influence, "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
nor forget that, besides producing it, Mrs. Stowe, in such a
work as "Old Town Folks," started the long line of studies of
New England rustic life which, not confined to that section,
have become so welcome a phase of later American art in fiction.
Among younger authors called untimely from their labors, it is
hard to resist the temptation to linger over such a figure as
that of Frank Norris, whose vital way of handling realistic
material with epic breath in his unfinished trilogy, gave so
great promise