Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Cathy Maxam and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS BY WILLIAM LYON PHELPS M.A. (HARVARD), PH.D. (YALE) FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT HARVARD LAMPSON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1910 _All rights reserved_ PREFACE Some of the essays in this volume have appeared in recent numbers of various periodicals. The essays on "Mark Twain" and "Thomas Hardy" were originally printed in the _North American Review_; those on "Mrs. Ward" and "Rudyard Kipling," in the _Forum_; those on "Alfred Ollivant," "Björnstjerne Björnson," and "Novels as a University Study," in the _Independent_. The same magazine contained a portion of the present essay on "Lorna Doone," while the article on "The Teacher's Attitude toward Contemporary Literature" was written for the _Chicago Interior_. My friend, Mr. Andrew Keogh, Reference Librarian of Yale University, has been kind enough to prepare the List of Publications, thereby increasing my debt to him for many previous favours. W. L. P. YALE UNIVERSITY, Tuesday, _5 October, 1909_. CONTENTS PAGE WILLIAM DE MORGAN 1 THOMAS HARDY 33 WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 56 BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON 82 MARK TWAIN 99 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 115 HERMANN SUDERMANN 132 ALFRED OLLIVANT 159 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 172 MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 191 RUDYARD KIPLING 208 "LORNA DOONE" 229 APPENDICES 245 A. NOVELS AS A UNIVERSITY STUDY 245 B. THE TEACHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 252 C. TWO POEMS 258 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS 261 ESSAYS ON MODERN NOVELISTS I WILLIAM DE MORGAN