HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY GIFT OF PROF. WILLIAM G. HOWARD Published under special arrangement with Copyright, 1892 and 1899 Copyright, 1917 By P. F. COLLIER & SON W FICTION IN AMERICA HEN Irving's "Sketch Book" appeared in 1819 the history of American fiction was a short and sorry chapter. While Puritanism held sway, prose fiction, like drama, was discredited as idle, if not actually wicked. With the period of the American Revolution this ban was indeed removed; but the claims of the state, except upon a few sentimentalists of inconsiderable genius, exerted a pressure which stifled the American novel until, between 1798 and 1804, Charles Brockden Brown adapted to American scenes the romance of terror-the so-called "Gothic Romance." Brown, though he is not improperly called "the father of the American novel," has deservedly failed to arouse general interest: his plots are badly constructed and nearly incredible, his characters pride themselves upon their morbid unusualness, and his scenes are only occasionally real. Such was the modest beginning. All the more remarkable are the achievements of Irving, Cooper, and Poe between 1820 and 1840: they added to American literature the legendary narrative sketch, the his. torical novel, the novel of the sea, the novel of forest and stream, and the short story. Irving's love of legend and of humor, manifest in his delightful "Knickerbocker History of New York" (1809), reappeared in the "Sketch Book" (1819), notably in "Rip Van Winkle" and the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." A delightfully pure and well-modulated style and a sure eye for the half-comic, half-romantic legends of his native locality make these chapters preeminent in what is probably the best example of their author's genius. They are, indeed, wellnigh perfect in their kind. If Irving had not the power to originate and sustain an elaborate human drama, he could at least as these tales and the inimitable sketch of "The Stout Gentleman" in "Bracebridge Hall" sufficiently proveset forth single figures, quaint and slightly legendary, with |