_Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward._--It is of course a far cry from Harte to Mrs. Phelps Ward, who came into notice in the East in the same year in which _The Overland_ was started. Mrs. Ward was born at Andover, Massachusetts, and was the daughter of Professor Austin Phelps of Andover Theological Seminary. In 1888 she was married to the Rev. Herbert D. Ward. She is the author of a long list of kindly and readable stories, none of which quite attains to distinction in point of quality, but several of which have been popular and influential. Beginning with “The Gates Ajar” (1868), half novel, half threnody, she continued with “The Silent Partner” (1870), “The Story of Avis” (1877), a favourite with many, “An Old Maid’s Paradise” (1879) and its sequel “Burglars in Paradise” (1886), “Friends, a Duet” (1881), “Doctor Zay” (1882), “Beyond the Gates” (1883), which elaborates the idea of her first story, “A Singular Life” (1894), her best book, and “The Man in the Case” (1906). Her plots, sometimes conventional, are never complicated and are skilfully managed; and her women characters are generally true to life. Of her men, for example Emanuel Bayard, so much cannot be said. She collaborated with her husband in writing two or three novels which were not very successful. _Constance Fenimore Woolson._--A grandniece of Fenimore Cooper, Miss Woolson (1848-94) has taken a place among women novelists scarcely less honourable than that held by her kinsman among American novelists in general. Born at Claremont, New Hampshire, she was educated in Cleveland, Ohio, and at a French school in New York City. After her father’s death in 1869, she spent her summers at Cooperstown, New York, or on the Great Lakes, and her winters in the South. Her first literary effort, “The Happy Valley” (_Harper’s_, July, 1870) met with immediate approval. From then till her death, she contributed regularly to _Harper’s_. She published “The Old Stone House” (1873), “Castle Nowhere; Lake Country Sketches” (1875), “Rodman the Keeper; Southern Sketches” (1880), “Anne” (1882), “For the Major” (1883), “East Angels” (1886), her most elaborate and perhaps her best novel, dealing with ante-bellum Georgia coast life, “Jupiter Lights” (1889), and “Horace Chase” (1894), by many preferred to any of her other works. Possessing decided gifts as a novelist, she had a high standard of excellence. Some of her plots are intricate, but all are skilfully worked out. Charles Dudley Warner spoke of her as one of the first in America to bring the short story as a social study to its present degree of excellence. Her best work should have more than a merely ephemeral life.