This book is the first full-length biographical and critical
study of the American Realist author Harold Frederic (1856-1898).
As London correspondent for the New York Times and the author of
nine novels, Frederic was internationally known at the time of his
death; today he is remembered mainly for his novel "The Damnation
of Theron Ware" (1896). Drawing on archival and published material
not available to earlier writers on Frederic, Myers paints a
fascinating portrait of the man and his times as an expatriate in
London in the 1890s, his friendship with James, Crane, Wells, and
their circle, and the scandal surrounding his death at the age of
42.
Frederic was a colorful fellow. As a correspondent in London in
the 1890s, he knew Henry James, Stephen Crane, George Gissing, and
a host of other literary characters. He fully lived a bohemian
life, keeping a real wife and a common-law wife simultaneously,
fathering broods of children, writing journalism and novels at a
great rate, and dying at 42 of overwork--partly because he let his
second wife talk him into refusing medical help (leading to a
scandalous court case). Myers concentrates on four main themes:
Frederic as an expatriate; his work as representative of the
transition from realism to naturalism in American literature;
Frederic as a transitional author in the shift from 19th century to
20th century styles of publishing; and Frederic as a representative
of the fin de siecle. Myers has worked extensively with Frederic's
correspondence as well as in publishers' archives (especially
Scribner's), and he sees Frederic as a writer who flourished just
as the American literary marketplace was being transformed from the
rather poky 19th-century model into the faster-paced 20th-century
version so familiar today. This biography will interest not just
specialists and Frederic scholars, but also anyone with an interest
in American literary culture in one of its defining moments.
General
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