It was a woman of the North who pictured, in a series of brief tales and sketches full of insight, the desolate South at the close of the Civil War: Constance Fenimore Woolson, the most broadly national of our women novelists. Her feeling for local color is quick and true; and though she has especially identified herself with the Lake country and with Florida, one is left with the impression that her assimilative powers would enable her to reproduce as successfully the traits of any other quarter of the Union. Few American writers of fiction have given evidence of such breadth, so full a sense of the possibilities of the varied and complex life of our wide land. Robust, capable, mature,—these seem fitting words to apply to the author of “Anne,” of “East Angels,” of the excellent short stories in “Rodman the Keeper.” Women have reason for pride in a representative novelist whose genius is trained and controlled, without being tamed or dispirited. Similar surefootedness and mastery of means are displayed by Mary Hallock Foote in her picturesque western stories, such as “The Led Horse Claim: A Romance of the Silver Mines,” and “John Bodewin’s Testimony”; in which a certain gracefulness takes the place of the fuller warmth of Miss Woolson. One is apt to name the two writers together, since they represent the most supple and practiced talent just now exercised by women in the department of fiction. Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, English by birth and education, and influenced by the Dickens tradition, though reflecting the tone of her environment wherever fate may lead her, touches American literature chiefly on the Southern side, through “Louisiana” and “Esmeralda.” Despite the ambitious character of her novel of Washington society, “Through One Administration,” her most durable work is either thoroughly English, or belongs to the international school. This particular branch of fiction we cannot now pause to note, though conscious that such books as the beautiful “Guenn” of Blanche Willis Howard have their own distinct value. A truly native flower, though gathered in a field so unfamiliar as to wear a seemingly foreign charm, is Mrs. Jackson’s poetic “Ramona.” A book instinct with passionate purpose, intensely alive, and involving the reader in its movement, it yet contains an idyl of singular loveliness, the perfection of which lends the force of contrast to the pathetic close. A novel of reform, into which a great and generous soul poured its gathered strength, it none the less possesses artistic distinction. Something is, of course, due to the charm of atmosphere, the beauty of the background against which the plot naturally placed itself; more, to the trained hand, the pen pliant with long and free exercise; most, to the poet-heart. “Ramona” stands as the most finished, though not the most striking example, that what American women have done notably in literature they have done nobly.