_Amelia E. Barr_ 304 CHAPTER XXVII _Alice Hegan Rice_ 313 CHAPTER XXVIII _Alice Duer Miller_ 320 CHAPTER XXIX _Eleanor Hallowell Abbott_ 326 CHAPTER XXX _Harriet T. Comstock_ 334 CHAPTER XXXI _Honoré Willsie_ 342 CHAPTER XXXII _Frances Hodgson Burnett_ 357 CHAPTER XXXIII _Mary E. Waller_ 369 CHAPTER XXXIV _Zona Gale_ 377 CHAPTER XXXV _Mary Heaton Vorse_ 386 INTRODUCTION This book, the rather unpremeditated production of several months’ work, is by a man who is not a novelist and who is therefore entirely unfitted to write about women who are novelists. Several excuses may be urged; the author is, by general agreement, young. He has to do with many novels, being, indeed, a sort of new and strange creature, a literary reporter self-styled, a person connected with a newspaper and charged with the task of describing new books for the readers thereof. As he could make no critical pretensions he had to fall back upon a process peculiar to newspaper work, the attempt at a simple putting before the public of facts, of things lately said and done--in short, of news. He had to regard a new book as a piece of news to be communicated as honestly and as entertainingly as any other occurrence. And so, here. He has tried to be a good reporter of the personalities, performances and methods of work of some of the best known American women novelists. An effort has been made to include in this book all the living American women novelists whose writing, by the customary standards, is artistically fine. An equal effort has been made to include all the living American women novelists whose writing has attained a wide popularity. The author does not contend, nor will he so much as allow, that the production of writing artistically fine is a greater achievement than the satisfaction of many thousands of readers. It may be more lasting; it is not more meritorious; and to attempt to institute comparisons between the two things is absurd. The critic may be justified in treating of Edith Wharton and ignoring Gene Stratton-Porter. The literary reporter who should do such a thing doesn’t know his job.