American Literature: Realism & Naturalism Period

Regionalism

A literary term that refers to a work connected to a particular geography, depicting its history, culture, ways of speech, leisure activities, food, folklore, etc. The setting takes on the role of a character.

Naturalism

A product of scientific determinism. You are controlled by your environment. There is no hope for you. Dreams come and go. The author is amoral in their depictions of characters and plot; they do not judge, they merely observe.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A utopian feminist, she became a role model for future generations of feminists for her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Single-handedly wrote and edited her own magazine from 1909-1916, The Forerunner, in which much of her fiction appeared.

Willa Cather

Achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. Grew up in Nebraska, lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, and at thirty-three, moved to New York. By the 1930s, critics began to dismiss her as a "romantic, nostalgic writer who could not cope with the present." In the wake of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, her work was seen as lacking in social relevance.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

African-American poet, novelist, and playwright whose most popular work was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South. One of the first African American writers to establish a national reputation.

Robert Grant

Author and a jurist who participated in a review of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial a few weeks before their executions.

Grace King

Author of Louisiana stories, history, and biography and a leader in historical and literary activities. Her family had an aristocratic background but had been impoverished by the American Civil War.

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Began writing stories and verse for children while a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Deals mostly with New England life. Worked as secretary to author and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories combining domestic realism with supernaturalism.

William Dean Howells

Believed the future of American writing was not in poetry but in novels, a form which he saw as shifting from "romance" to a serious form.

Joel Chandler Harris

Best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Led two professional lives: as editor and journalist he supported a vision of the New South, stressing regional and racial reconciliation; as fiction writer and folklorist, he wrote many Brer Rabbit stories from the African-American oral tradition and helped revolutionize literature in the process.

Hamlin Garland

Best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers. Wrote many autobiographical works and, later, after moving to Hollywood in 1929, he became obsessed with investigating and defending psychic phenomena.

Sarah Orne Jewett

Best known for local color works set along or near the southern seacoast of Maine. Recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism. Possessed a keen descriptive gift.

Bret Harte

Best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California. His popularity eventually waned, and by the end of 1872 he was so desperate he was republishing old work, delivering lectures about the gold rush, and even selling advertising jingles to soap companies.

Booker T. Washington

Black thinker whose major premise was that African Americans must ignore racial segregation and political rejection in favor of good, honest, hard work. Famous line: "Cast down the buckets where you are."

W.E.B. Du Bois

Coined the term "double-consciousness," referring to the act of being aware of one's self only through the eyes of others.

Mary Noailles Murfree

Considered to be Appalachia's first significant female writer and her work a necessity for the study of Appalachian literature.

Henry James

Contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. Many of his novels explore the adjustments Americans, especially women, face in European countries as they interact with different social structures and mores.

David Graham Phillips

Employed as a reporter for The Sun from 1890-1893, then columnist and editor with the New York World until 1902. His novels often commented on social issues of the day and frequently chronicled events based on his real-life journalistic experiences. Considered a Progressive, and for exposing corruption in the Senate, he was labelled a muckracker.

Charles Eastman

Founded thirty-two Native American chapters of the YMCA and helped to found the Boy Scouts of America. The first Native American author to write American history from the Native point of view.

Constance Fenimore Woolson

Grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe.

Stephen Crane

His Civil War novel was one of the first depictions of battles and soldiers from a realist perspective. Tended to utilize naturalist conventions like the lack of control humans have over nature.

Booker T. Washington

His autobiography was arguably the seminal work on the black experience at the turn of the century; it was highly acclaimed and hotly contested by other black thinkers, especially W. E. B. Du Bois.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

His second volume, "Children of the Night," was read by President Teddy Roosevelt's son Kermit, who recommended it his father, who then secured the author a job at the New York Customs Office. Won the Pulitzer Prize three times in the 1920s.

James Lane Allen

His work often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky. His work is characteristic of the late 19th century local color era, when writers sought to capture vernacular in their fiction.

Realism

Interested in the mundane episodes of middle-class life. Tends to lean towards social reform. Writers of this discipline took it upon themselves to critically comment on America's politics, economics, industry, and social issues.

Samuel L. Clemens

Mark Twain's birth name.

George Parsons Lathrop

Married Rose Hawthorne, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edited the complete standard edition of Hawthorne's works and adapted "The Scarlet Letter" for an opera.

Theodore Dreiser

Midwestern writer whose novels are often set in Chicago. One of his sisters ran away with a married man who embezzled money from his job; he used this true story to frame his first novel, which was considered immoral and dangerous by publishers. Many of his subsequent novels focus on themes of social mobility, class differences, sexual empowerment, and issues affecting urban life.

Charles W. Chesnutt

Mixed race author best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South. He straddled the divide between the local color school of American writing and literary realism.

Harold Frederic

Moved to England as London correspondent of the New York Times, a position he retained for the rest of his life. Recognized for his ability as both writer and talker. His most famous novel was hailed a "minor classic of realism."

William Dean Howells

Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters," he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own prolific writings. His literary reputation soared with a realist novel describing the decay of marriage.

Frank Norris

Novelist during the Progressive Era who wrote mostly in the naturalist genre. Work often depicts suffering caused by corrupt and greedy turn-of-the-century corporate monopolies. Characterized as an anti-Semitic writer.

George Washington Cable

Novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been called "the most important southern artist working in the late 19th century, as well as the first modern southern writer."

Margaret Deland

Novelist, short story writer, and poet, known principally for the novel "John War, Preacher" (1888) which was an indictment of Calvinism. Literary realist.

A. M. Barnard

Pen name used by Louisa May Alcott early in her career to write fiery books about characters relentless in their pursuit of their desires.

Louisa May Alcott

Raised by transcendentalist parents in New England, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the days, including Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. Received critical success for her writing in the 1860s. An abolitionist and feminist.

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

The first female Mexican-American author to write in English. Published two books: "Who Would Have Thought It?" (1872) and "The Squatter and the Don" (1885). Her life took her from coast to coast in the U.S., giving her a great vantage point to write about all sorts of social issues.

Kate Chopin

The people in this writer's stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. She wrote short stories for both children and adults which were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion.

1865-1910

The scope of the realist/naturalist period.

Edith Wharton

This writer grew up in a socially mobile New York family; her life centered on social affairs, balls, and fashion. She used conventions of realism and naturalism to depict the trapped and controlled life of a woman in upper-class America.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Usually taught as Booker T. Washington's antithesis. Black thinker born to free parents in Massachusetts, who asserts that blacks should engage in higher education, politics, intellectual occupations, and all that life has to offer.

Carl Sandburg

Writer and editor best known for poetry. Won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. Also remembered by children for his Rootabaga Stories.

Mark Twain

Writer who lost a great deal of money by investing in poor ventures, notably the Paige Compositor, which failed because of its complexity and imprecision. Chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, though he had no legal responsibility to do so. William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature."