Fiction of Adventure
There is no questioning the force that Hamlin Garland has been in the literature of our time. He has told his story of his[Pg 23] own life and literary activities in “A Son of the Middle Border” (1917), a volume that was at once accepted as one of the foremost of American literary autobiographies. In no way detracting from the quality of Mr. Garland’s later work is the ventured opinion that he has never surpassed some of his earlier stories. His writing career began about 1890, when the first of the tales of “Main-Traveled Roads” struck a fresh note in fiction. Between 1895 and 1898 he wrote “Rose of Dutcher’s Cooley,” and, in 1902, “The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop.” These, with “Main-Traveled Roads” are still probably his most popular books. In 1900 “The Eagle’s Heart” appeared, and later “Hesper,” “The Tyranny of the Dark,” “The Long Trail,” “The Shadow World” and “Cavanagh, Forest Ranger.”
Writing men of our generation have begun under the magic spell of Stevenson. To Lloyd Osbourne it was given to serve his apprenticeship to R. L. S., as Maupassant served his apprenticeship to Flaubert, and, while yet an apprentice, to be accepted as a collaborator. Together the stepfather and the stepson worked out “The Wrong Box” (1889), “The Wrecker” (1892), and “The Ebb Tide” (1894). Then Stevenson passed on into Shadow Land, and some years later Osbourne began alone with “The Queen Versus Billy” and “Love the Fiddler.” In the first decade of the present century the motor-car was still something of a novelty, and as such almost a virgin field for fiction. It was of its then baffling problems and incomprehensible moods that Lloyd Osbourne told in “The Motor-maniacs,” “Three Speeds Forward,” and “Baby Bullet.” Later books are “Wild Justice,” “The Adventurer,” and “A Person of Some Importance.”
SAMUEL MERWIN
A certain letter of the alphabet for a time seemed to exert a cabalistic influence on Louis Joseph Vance. “The Brass Bowl” appeared in 1907. The book of the next year was “The Black Bag.” In 1909 it was “The Bronze Bell.” There ended the use of the double B, but in 1912, Mr. Vance wrote “The Bandbox.” In the meantime had appeared “The Pool of Flame,” “The Fortune Hunter,” “No Man’s Land,” and “Cynthia-of-the-Minute.” Among the books that have followed “The Bandbox” are “The Day of Days,” “Joan[Pg 24] Thursday,” showing Mr. Vance at his best, “The Lone Wolf,” and very recently, “The False Faces,” in which the Lone Wolf returns to play a great part in the World War.