Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
Francis Hackett, “Amateur Romance,” Chicago Evening Post, 14 May 1909
It is known to many tramps that within a forty-mile radius of Chicago there are still to be found farmhouses absolutely innocent of modern improvements, preserving primitive, insanitary and uncomfortable conditions with pioneer fidelity. To compare Miss Glasgow's amateur romance to one of these establishments would be violent, but her determined adherence to the ancient coincidences and still more ancient sentimentalisms of yesteryear shocks one into realizing that ideas are slow to permeate, that the contrast between Cook County and McHenry is nothing to the contrast between Shaw and Glasgow. Miss Glasgow does not write primitive, uncomfortable or insanitary romance if she is to be compared' with Miss Amelia Barr or Miss Braddon. But in an era when Mr. Wells has published Kipps and Tono-Bungay, and Mr. Galsworthy has written Fraternity, the survival of tales like the present one is precisely as astounding as the survival of a certain paleozoic hotel in the village of Wauconda.
Miss Glasgow has to be acquitted of any serious study of her art. She has written novels in the past, but she still has an amateur idea of fiction form. Otherwise she would never have attempted to make this romance the autobiography of a railroad president. Narrative in the first person presents uncommon difficulties, but Miss Glasgow has audaciously taken romance to mean license, and from the start expects us to resign to the convention that a man of affairs would talk in the pretty idiom of a southern lady.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.