Every reader of this and the preceding chapter will miss the name of favorite novelists, and marvel that they should have been omitted or crowded out to make room for others less deserving of mention. Accordingly it must be remarked that a list of everybody's favorites would have more than filled the space assigned. Writers of fiction, especially in the short story form of it, have already become so numerous that they all can be listed only in a catalogue or directory, and should be classified according to the kinds of fiction they produce. Some of these kinds are all that it has been expedient to enumerate here, with a few prominent names belonging to each class. It will be easy to find others in each neighborhood if these are not sufficient. But even the inveterate novel reader will admit that fiction is not the whole of literature, and that a mental diet of sweets and stimulants alone is apt to induce intellectual dyspepsia.

XXXVII

AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE survey of the century in chapters of the national series has included political writers who defined the Constitution, poets who attempted ambitious epics and dramas, early novelists who wrote in the English fashion of the time, a group of literary aspirants who gathered around Irving, later novelists inspired by Cooper, poets who succeeded Bryant, Cambridge writers of prose and verse, historians who wrote of our own and foreign lands, orators who contributed classics to our literature, and novelists who are leaders in several departments of fiction. Throughout the entire succession a rapid yet healthy and symmetrical growth in our literature has been apparent. The sapling of 1800 has put forth branch and leaf, blossom and fruit, in due season and on every side. Somewhat ungainly at first, as all young growths are apt to be, scant here and overloaded there, it has at length shaped itself into reasonable proportion, strength, and grace in the sunshine and storms of a hundred years.

As we look at this accumulated and growing literature at the end of the century a few reflections are inevitable. First, concerning its volume. It would be impracticable to compute how many books have been printed in the last one hundred years, or to say how far many of them

are read to-day. It is more to the purpose to note the measure and quality of present production.

in 1900.

Publishers reported that in the closing year of the century the number of new books by American authors, including new editions of a comparatively few, Book-making amounted to 3,878. These figures represent about 3,000 writers throughout the country who have had their books published. This seems a large number until it is remembered that the entire population of the country is not far from 75,000,000, which would leave but one author to 25,000 readers. Still, 3,000 writers publishing editions averaging 1,000 copies each swell the number of separate volumes to 3,000,000, or one copy for every twenty-five readers, which may not be far from the average number who read a single volume during the year. These figures do not represent all the writing that is done, such as for magazines and newspapers, not to mention nine out of every ten bulky book manuscripts which, it is estimated, are declined by publishers.

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Of these American books which were printed during the year the greatest number belong to the department of fiction-659; but when to these native works of fiction 619 reprints or importations of foreign novels are added, it will be seen that fiction presents a total of 1,278 titles, new and old, domestic and foreign. It is safe to say that 900 of these are new, and that five novels every two days are demanded by the American public -else they would not be issued. More than one-half of these are furnished by our own writers. So are 404 juvenile books, the third in the list; law books being second, 515 in number; 347 in education and language, and 291 in theology and religion; after which follow with

decreasing numbers political and social science, biography, history, poetry and drama, literature and collected works, physical and mathematical science, geography and travel, medicine and hygiene, fine arts, useful arts, domestic and rural books, 53; sports and amusements, 35; humor and satire, 31. These lists, which do not greatly vary for the last few years, give a fair idea of the demand by readers. and production by writers, so far as quantity is concerned.

With regard to quality, the test must be made by what is published and called for in the open market of the world. Time was when our best reading came from England. No American prejudice prevented the importation and reading of English books after the beginning of the present century. Preference for British authors was general. Native writers have had to win their way in the face of such preference. In spite of it they are now neck and neck with English and foreign producers. of fiction, according to statistics for the year 1901. And in all the other departments taken together the demand for American works over foreign here was as eighteen to ten. The closest competition was in the field of poetry and drama where the foreign books were to the American as 112 to 184. At the same time it may be observed that the total production of new books in England for the above year was 5,971, and in France 13,362 as against 3,878 in this country, including new editions of previous publications here. Such comparisons show that here at home our literature must take its chances for popular favor in the people's judgment with the best that England and the Continent can produce. best without regard to nationality.

Readers will have the

Puritan exclusion is

a thing of the past. In its place came a temporary bondage to English standards and literature. Then the reaction of young America followed, and later a mild attack in certain quarters of Anglomania and in others of Anglophobia. Now public sentiment is getting clothed and in its right mind, and popular taste settled and steady. Its vibrations and variations are not greater than those of the magnetic needle, and it knows the chief meridians.

The element of numbers must also be taken into account in estimating the value of different works in any department. Some will say that judicious advertising will sell any book, but general commendation by friend to friend and neighbor to neighbor will do more to extend the reading of it in wider and wider circles. Something must also be credited to the direction popular interest is taking, as for example just now in the line of our own history, particularly in the Revolutionary period. This will not account entirely, but it must somewhat, for the remarkable popularity of such books as "Janice Meredith," by Paul Leicester Ford, and of "Richard Carvel," by Winston Churchill, and of "Hugh Wynne," by Dr. Mitchell. The comparatively unimportant events of that contest are now reviewed in the light of the magnificent results to which they led, thus giving them fresh significance. Moreover, a nation which is beginning to long for an heroic past such as older nations possess is ready to cast glamour over transactions which were commonplace in their outward features and sublime only in the lofty spirit and devotion which animated them. Yet with so little of external pomp and circumstance to adorn their stories, our latest novelists have placed themselves alongside the best writers of the day, according to the over