Nothing remotely approaching the bulk and beam of Tolstoi's "War
and Peace," or, to descend to a smaller scale, Zola's "The Attack on the
Mill," has come out of it. Its appeal to the national imagination was
undoubtedly of the most profound character; it coloured politics for
fifty years, and is today a dominating influence in the thought of whole
sections of the American people. But in all that stirring up there was
no upheaval of artistic consciousness, for the plain reason that there
was no artistic consciousness there to heave up, and all we have in the
way of Civil War literature is a few conventional melodramas, a few
half-forgotten short stories by Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane, and a
half dozen idiotic popular songs in the manner of Randall's "Maryland,
My Maryland."
In the seventies and eighties, with the appearance of such men as Henry
James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain and Bret Harte, a better day
seemed to be dawning. Here, after a full century of infantile
romanticizing, were four writers who at least deserved respectful
consideration as literary artists, and what is more, three of them
turned from the conventionalized themes of the past to the teeming and
colourful life that lay under their noses.
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