My Contemporaries in Fiction by David Christie Murray

I suppose it will not be disputed that the glory of a nation's literature lies in the fact that it is national -- that it reflects truly the spirit and the life of the people with whom it is concerned, by whom it is written, and to whom it belongs. It will not be denied either that this final splendour has not yet descended on the literature of America. The happy and tonic optimism of Emerson is a gift which could hardly have been bestowed upon any man in an old country. It belongs to a land and a time of boundless aspiration and of untired youth, and in virtue of this possession Emerson is amongst the most characteristically American of Americans. In the walks of fiction, with which alone we have to deal in these pages, the Americans have been distinctively English in spirit and in method (until within recent years), even when they have dealt with themes chosen from their own surroundings.

There is nowhere in the world, and never was until now, and possibly never again will be, such another field for the born student of human nature as is afforded by the United States at this time. The world has never seen such an intimate mixture of racial elements as may be found there. A glance at the Newspaper Directory shows the variety and extent of the foreign elements which, though in rapid process of absorption, are as yet undigested. Hundreds on hundreds on hundreds of journals minister to the daily and weekly needs of Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, Hungarians. There are Polish newspapers, and Armenian, and Hebrew, and Erse and Gaelic. Sleepy old Spain is rubbing shoulders with the eager and energetic races of Maine and New York and Massachusetts. The negro element is everywhere, and the Chinese add a flavour of their own to the _olla podrida_. So far no American writers of fiction have seen America in the large.