_Mrs. Burton N. Harrison._--Mrs. Burton Harrison (born Constance
Cary, at Vaucluse, Virginia, in 1846) has written interesting and
highly realistic novels of New York City life, full of local colour
and effective in background; and some novels of Virginia life. Mr.
Harrison, to whom she was married in 1867, had been private secretary
to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. The couple soon
removed to New York, which has since been their permanent home. Mrs.
Harrison’s first venture in literature was “A Little Centennial Lady”
(_Scribner’s Monthly_, July, 1876), a sprightly historical sketch. Her
novels dealing with Northern society are “Golden Rod” (1878), “Helen
Troy” (1881), “The Anglomaniacs” (1890), “Sweet Bells out of Tune”
(1893), “A Bachelor Maid” (1894), “An Errant Wooing” (1895), “Good
Americans” (1897), “A Triple Entanglement” (1897), “The Carcelline
Emerald” (1899), and “The Circle of a Century.” Perhaps the chief
excellence of these stories is the dialogue, in the management of
which Mrs. Harrison shows great skill. Although the attitude of the
author is that of a satirist, her laughter at the foibles of society is
not unkindly. Of Virginia she has written “Crow’s Nest and Bellhaven
Tales” (1892) and “A Son of the Old Dominion” (1897), which deals
with pre-Revolutionary times. “A Daughter of the South” (1892) is an
exquisitely told story of New Orleans Creole life thrown into the
environment of Paris under the Second Empire.
_Charles Egbert Craddock._--Charles Egbert Craddock is the pen name
of Mary Noailles Murfree (born in 1850), who contributed to _The
Atlantic_ for several years before it was suspected that her stories
were written by a woman. She is the daughter of a once prominent lawyer
of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who in 1883 removed to St. Louis. Because
of an accident, Miss Murfree was for several years unable to walk. She
was a diligent student and somehow gained an intimate knowledge of the
mountaineers of Eastern Tennessee, who figure in all of her stories.
Her first story of any importance was “The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s
Cove” (_The Atlantic_, May, 1878). It was largely due to Mr. Aldrich’s
urgent representations that her first collection of stories, “In the
Tennessee Mountains,” found a publisher (1884). Of this a writer in
_The Nation_ said, with justice: “We have not only one mountain valley,
but a whole country of hills--not a man and a woman here and there,
but the people of a whole district--not merely a day of winter or of
summer, but all the year--not lives, but life.” This is substantially
true of all her works, in which she described prosaic and pathetic
mountaineer life, being always inspired, however, by the solitude and
grandeur of the Great Smoky Mountains. The list of her works is a long
one: “Where the Battle was Fought” (1884); “Down the Ravine” (1885);
“The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains” (1885), which recounts the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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