T.B.
Aldrich's "Story of a Bad Boy." Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of the
Grotesque and the Arabesque," are remarkable for intensity and
vividness of conception, combined with a circumstantial invention
almost equal to that of Defoe. Mrs. Burnett and Mr. J.W. De Forest are
still writing excellent novels of American life; and Mr. Henry James,
Jr., is studying that peculiar form of human nature known as the
American in Europe.[210]
[Footnote 210: Other American writers of fiction:--R.B. Kimball, Herman
Melville, Dr. R. Bird, John Neal, H.W. Longfellow, Washington Allston,
Maria S. Cummins, W.G. Simms, Theodore Winthrop, Mary J. Holmes, Mrs.
Terhune, Augusta Evans Wilson, Catherine Sedgwick Valerio.]
VII.
The historical novel is obviously a subdivision of the novel of life
and manners. But, dealing as it does with remote ages, with forgotten
opinions and long-disused customs, it has to reconstruct where the
novel of contemporary life has only to illustrate. Strict historical
accuracy can hardly be expected in fiction concerned with the past. The
details of life, always difficult to seize, are almost beyond the reach
of the novelist who deals with a subject with which he has had no
personal experience. A certain amount of accuracy concerning dress,
customs, peculiarities of opinion and language are necessary to give to
a historical novel the effect of verisimilitude.
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