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.