The Turn of the Century Authors

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)

While she is not one of the more prolific writers of “local color” she did seek to show the realities of her native region
Her short stories suggest interaction of experience, precise observation, and accurate memory
Her works are both creative and objective of subjective matter---its beauty, its power to touch her readers with so-called domestic interior lives, and its evocative nature imagery.
In style, she is independent and original, always writing truth as she sees it without moralizing sentimentality
Enjoyed a popularity among her peers as well as abroad
She never married, but did have a long-time relationship with another woman (Annie Fields, a widow of famous publisher James T. Fields). The two shared what is commonly called a “Boston Marriage.” While Jewett felt strong attachments to women, there is no evidence to decide her sexual orientation, one way or the other.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)

Born in Randolph, MA, she grew up in intimate familiarity with the economically depressed circumstances and strict Calvinist belief system that shaped the lives of the majority of her characters.
Spent one year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary but did not enjoy college life or living away from home where she faced a series of misfortunes:

her teaching career was unsuccessful
her sister died
her father’s business failed
her mother was forced to support the family by working as a house keeper for the town’s minister

After her parents died, she moved back to Randolph to live with her childhood friend, Mary Wales
First wrote stories and poetry for children, but is best know today for her short stories
Became a shrewd and successful business woman
Her best fiction focuses on the plight of women whose lives are bounded by poverty and the social constraints imposed on them by them by their strict religious beliefs and their position as women.
Many of her stories often portrays characters that create obstacles to their own happiness by their strict adherence to Calvinist morality, while in others she portrays the rebellious triumphs of seemingly meek women, depicting strategies for gaining and maintaining control over their domestic situations with humor and sensitivity.
In 1926 she was awarded the William Dean Howells Good Medal for Fiction by the American of Letters, and later that year she was inducted into the prestigious National Institute for Arts and Letters.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

Her short stories centered upon the changing society of New York City during her own lifetime

· Born to an aristocratic ancestry, she later in life rebelled against her role as a well bred young woman, viewing much of her “formalized” society primarily as a satirist

· She married Teddy Wharton, 12 years her senior, and lived a life of relative ease until she discovered that he had taken money from her to set up a mistress in Boston.

· She writes of the thoughts behind the actions of her characters

· She lived in Paris most of the later years of her life, returning to the United States only once in 1920 to accept the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The Age of Innocence

· She enjoyed the company of intelligent men in her lifetime: Teddy Roosevelt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Earnest Hemingway were all guests of her at one time or another; and she was friends with Henry James whose influence on her writing is inestimable

Stephen Crane (1971-1900)

The 14^th child of a Methodist minister, he was a typical American boy playing baseball, boxing and hunting. In college he became the youngest captain and the best shortstop the Syracuse University baseball ever had.
His mother supported her family as best she could after her husband’s death when Crane was 18, and for the next 5 years he lived in New York and nearly starved. The Bowery slums and a medical student’s boarding house were his abodes while he freelanced his way to a writing career.
He was clearly a phenomenal writer of his time; his work was experimental and completely naturalistic
He was convinced that if a story is transcribed in its actuality, as it appear to occur in life, it will convey its own emotional weight without sentimental heightening, moralizing, or even interpretive comment.
His realistic belief was that the destiny of human beings, like the biological fate of other creatures, is so much determined by factors beyond the control of individual will or choice that ethical judgment or moral comment by the author is irrelevant or impertinent.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)

A pioneer of naturalism in letters through his vigorous attach on the genteel tradition and his long and active interest in American social problems.
His themes deal mostly with the disparity between the rich and the poor, the cultured sophisticate and the provincial, and the powerful and the weak members of society; however, he also wrote of the effect of science and religion, the emergence of new power groups and the development of new theories in economics and political science.
One of eleven children, he lived his early years in poverty, emotional instability, and religious bigotry in the home, and of frequent moves dictated by financial necessity.
Out of his passions, contradictions, and sufferings, he wrenched the art that was his salvation from the hungers and depressions that racked him.
As a result of his photographic realism, some critics charged him with verboseness and lack of integration of characters; however, his belief that writers of the forces of nature must report life as they see it, and therefore must have freedom to do so, had an intense influence on younger writers and an even greater though less tangible impact on American life.