-
John William De Forest (May 31, 1826 – July 17, 1906) was an American soldier and writer of realistic fiction, best known for his Civil War novel Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty.
De Forest wrote essays, a few poems, and about fifty short stories, numerous military sketches, and book reviews, most of which were anonymous. In 1873, he contributed to The Atlantic Monthly a short serial story entitled "The Lauson Tragedy." -
Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (1831-1910; born Rebecca Blaine Harding) was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary Realism in American literature.
Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills published in the April 1861 edition of the Atlantic Monthly. It is considered a pioneering document marking transition from Romanticism to Realism.Throughout her lifetime, Harding Davis sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalised groups in the 19th century. -
Mark twain (Samuel Clemens (1835 - 1910)
Twain began writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. He was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. -
William Dean Howells (March 1, 1837 – May 11, 1920): American realist author and literary critic.
He wrote essays, novels, plays and poems. Founder of the literary method known as realism in fiction: "the truthful treatment of material," focusing on there here-and-now, avoiding the romantic fiction popular in his day. His themes covered from social adjustment, in "A Chance Acquaintance," (1873), to "A Modern Instance," (1882) and the first American novel to feature divorce as a major theme. Best known for the Christmas story Christmas Every Day and the novelThe Rise of Silas Lapham. -
Henry James, OM (April 15, 1843 – February 28, 1916) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.
Major figure of trans-Atlantic literature. His works juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (US), where people are often brash, open, and assertive and embody the virtues—freedom and a more highly evolved moral character—of the new American society. He explores this clash of personalities and cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well o badly. -
Edgar Watson Howe (May 3, 1853 - October 3, 1937) Editor and publisher, author, philosopher and noted "Sage of Potato Hill.
He established the Globe. For nearly half a century, the paper was one of the most widely quoted publications in the country.He "had the ability to seek the points overlooked by the majority and work them into paragraphs having an irresistable combination of sarcasm and good humor."His first work of fiction, "The Story of a Country Town," appeared in 1882 and classed by critics as one of the ten best American novels. According to William Allen White, Mark Twain covered the book with warm praise. -
Edgar Lee Masters (Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1868 - Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist.
Transitional figure in American Lit. The Spoon River poems are distinctly modern, unlike poems on the deaths of Whitman and Browning. He was comfortable with 19th century narrative He contributed to the development of the modern idiom. He celebrated the prairie landscapes, the people of Illinois, and the values of his Midwestern heritage. In his later poems he still pictured himself choking with unfulfilled longing, reaching to the sky for his kite floating above the hills of Mason County.
