Miss Jewett preferred to touch graciously the
sunnier slopes of this provincial temperament, to linger in its
ancient dignities and serenities. Miss Brown has shown the pathos
of its thwarted desires, its hunger for a beauty and a happiness
denied. Mary Wilkins Freeman revealed its fundamental tragedies
of will.
Two of the best known writers of New England fiction in this
period were not natives of the soil, though they surpassed most
native New Englanders in their understanding of the type. They
were William Dean Howells and Henry James. Mr. Howells, who, in
his own words, "can reasonably suppose that it is because of the
mixture of Welsh, German, and Irish in me that I feel myself so
typically American," came to "the Holy Land at Boston" as a
"passionate pilgrim from the West." "A Boy's Town," "My Literary
Passions," and "Years of my Youth" make clear the image of the
young poet-journalist who returned from his four years in Venice
and became assistant editor of "The Atlantic Monthly" in 1866. In
1871 he succeeded Fields in the editorship, but it was not until
after his resignation in 1881 that he could put his full strength
into those realistic novels of contemporary New England which
established his fame as a writer.
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