American Literary Centers | Page 9

of a talent in sociological satire which
would be extraordinary even if it were not altogether unrivalled among
us.
Could one say too much of the literary centre at Chicago? I fancy, yes;
or too much, at least, for the taste of the notable people who constitute
it. In Mr. Henry B. Fuller we have reason to hope, from what he has
already done, an American novelist of such greatness that he may well
leave being the great American novelist to any one who likes taking
that role. Mr. Hamlin Garland is another writer of genuine and original
gift who centres at Chicago; and Mrs. Mary Catherwood has made her
name well known in romantic fiction. Miss Edith Wyatt is a talent,
newly known, of the finest quality in minor fiction; Mr. Robert Herrick,
Mr. Will Payne in their novels, and Mr. George Ade and Mr. Peter
Dump in their satires form with those named a group not to be matched
elsewhere in the country. It would be hard to match among our critical
journals the 'Dial' of Chicago; and with a fair amount of publishing in a
sort of books often as good within as they are uncommonly pretty
without, Chicago has a claim to rank with our first literary centres.
It is certainly to be reckoned not so very far below London, which, with
Mr. Henry James, Mr. Harry Harland, and Mr. Bret Harte, seems to me
an American literary centre worthy to be named with contemporary
Boston. Which is our chief literary centre, however, I am not, after all,
ready to say. When I remember Mr. G. W. Cable, at Northampton,
Massachusetts, I am shaken in all my preoccupations; when I think of
Mark Twain, it seems to me that our greatest literary centre is just now
at Riverdale- on-the-Hudson.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Leaven, but not for so large a lump Mark Twain Not lack of quality but
quantity of the quality Our deeply incorporated civilization

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of American Literary Centers, by
William Dean Howells

American Literary Centers

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