Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) James Lane Allen A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK WITH PORTRAIT The Macmillan Company 66 Fifth Avenue, New York NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. JAMES LANE ALLEN A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK While "_The Choir Invisible_" was primarily a love story, the setting in which its action moved was historical. Apart from the masterly handling of human passion and the harmony of thought and expression with which he has treated the larger and deeper movements of life, it is probably Mr. Allen's ability to picture forth the early settlement of Kentucky that has given his writings so solid a foundation in the literary affections of English speaking people. The fascination that "_The Choir Invisible_" has had for so many thousands of readers is assuredly due as much to the author's faithful historic treatment of the mighty stream of migration which had begun to spread through the jagged channels of the Alleghanies over the then unknown illimitable West as to his power to tell an absorbing story. When "_The Choir Invisible_" appeared, this perhaps most fascinating period of early American history had not been used as a background of his story by any great master of fiction, and it requires no very keen literary insight to discover the sources of the popularity which has been accorded to the four or five recent novels, each of which has for its setting a period in our history whose glamour has touched our hearts and stirred our imaginations. Contemporary judgment is singularly unanimous in placing Mr. Allen in the front rank of American novelists, and it may not be out of place here to quote the opinions of two or three of the leading literary critical journals. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE, in the _Dial_ says that: