Of the same generation, but earlier or else later in the literary field, were the poets Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832-1911), and Louise Chandler Moulton (1835-1908); the essayist Mary Abigail Dodge, "Gail Hamilton" (1838-1896); the novelists Rose Terry Cooke (1827-1892), Jane G. Austin (1831-1894), and Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835----); and, latest of all to be known, the intense lyrist Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). In the eighties was to come the school of the younger realists, a part of the classical reaction--Alice Brown (1857----), Kate Douglas Wiggin (1859----) and Mary E. Wilkins (1862----), who were to record the later phases of the New England decline. Outside of the New England environment there was also a notable outburst of feminine literature. In the thirteen years from 1875 appeared the following significant first volumes: 1875. _Castle Nowhere_, Constance Fenimore Woolson (1848-1894). 1875. _A Woman in Armor_, Mary Hartwell Catherwood (1847-1902). 1877. _That Lass o' Lowrie's_, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849----). 1883. _The Led Horse Claim_, Mary Hallock Foote (1847----). 1884. _In the Tennessee Mountains_, Mary Noailles Murfree (1850----). 1884. _A New Year's Masque_, Edith M. Thomas (1854----). 1886. _The Old Garden and Other Verses_, Margaretta Wade Deland (1857----). 1886. _Monsieur Motte_, Grace King (1852----). 1887. _Knitters in the Sun_, Alice French (1850----). The wide recognition of the Victorian women, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Mrs. Browning, and their American contemporaries, Margaret Fuller and Mrs. Stowe, had given the impetus, and the enormous popularity of prose fiction, a literary form peculiarly adapted to feminine treatment, the opportunity. During all the period the work of women dominated to a large degree the literary output. I The earliest group to appear was made up of daughters of the Brahmins--Louisa M. Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Helen Hunt Jackson, and others--transition figures who clung to the old New England tradition, yet were touched by the new forces. The representative figure is Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Daughter and granddaughter of theologians and divinity professors, reared in the atmosphere of the Andover theological seminary of the earlier period, she was a daughter of her generation, a perfect sample of the culminating feminine product of two centuries of New England Puritanism--sensitive to the brink of physical collapse, intellectual, disquieted of soul, ridden of conscience, introspective. We know the type perfectly. Miss Jewett, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Brown, have drawn us scores of these women--the final legatees of Puritanism, daughters of Transcendentalists and abolitionists and religious wranglers.