The magazine-reading world has hardly recovered yet from its shock of surprise, on discovering the author of “In the Tennessee Mountains,” a book of short stories, projecting the lines on which the writer has since advanced in “The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountain” and “The Despot of Broomsedge Cove.” Why did Miss Murfree prefer to begin her literary career under the masculine name of “Charles Egbert Craddock”? Probably for the same reason as George Sand, George Eliot, Currer Bell; a reason stated by a stanch advocate of woman, in words that form a convenient answer to the common sneer. “Not because they wished to be men, but because they wished for an unbiassed judgment as artists.” The world has grown so much more enlightened on this point, that the biassed critic is now the exception, and the biassed editor is a myth. The precaution of disguise cannot much longer remain a necessity, if, indeed, it was necessary in the case of Miss Murfree. From whatever cause adopted, the mask was a completely deceptive one. Mr. Craddock’s vivid portrayal of life among the Tennessee Mountains was fairly discussed, and welcomed as a valuable and characteristic contribution from the South; and nobody hinted then that the subtle poetic element, and the tendency to subordinate human interest to scenery, were indications of the writer’s sex. The few cherishers of the fading superstition that women are without humor, laughed heartily and unsuspiciously over the droll situations, the quaint sayings of the mountaineers. Once more the _reductio ad absurdum_ has been applied to the notion of ordained, invariable, and discernible difference between the literary work of men and that of women. The method certainly defers to dullness; but it also affords food for amusement to the ironically inclined. This review, cursory and incomplete as it is, of the chief accomplishment of American women in native fiction, serves to bring out the fact that they have, during the last forty years, supplied to our literature an element of great and genuine value; and that while their productions have of course varied in power and richness they have steadily gained in art. How wide the gap between “Hobomok” and “Ramona”! During the latter half of the period, the product gives no general evidence of limitation; and the writers would certainly be placed, except for the purposes of this article, among their brother authors, in classes determined by method, local background, or any other basis of arrangement which is artistic rather than personal.