Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Realists and Naturalists

Americas Civil War not only brought to an end the transcendental idealism of the early nineteenth century, it also marked the beginning of an era of significant growth for a largely commercial and urban middle class. With an audience seeking works that rendered American life in the light of common day, writers of realistic and naturalistic fiction flourished-two distinct generations of writers, each generation sharing a similar set of assumptions about literature. Both groups expressed a vision of life which their contemporaries shared, combining autobiographical and comic threads and revealing themes through action. American modernism has its roots in writing represented in this DLB volume-turn-of-the-century writers (most born in the early 1870s) who helped create the modern temper in America in the years preceding the first World War.

42 entries include: Henry Adams, Edward Bellamy, Samuel L. Clemens, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Mary Wilkins Freema, Bret Harte, Henry James, Jack London, Frederic Remington, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Constance Fenimore Woolson.