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Read Ebook: James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work by Unknown
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next PageEbook has 28 lines and 6549 words, and 1 pagesJames Lane Allen A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK WITH PORTRAIT The Macmillan Company 66 Fifth Avenue, New York NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. JAMES LANE ALLEN A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORK "There are two chief reasons why Mr. Allen seems to me one of the first of our novelists to day. He is most exquisitely alive to the fine spirit of comedy. He has a prose style of wonderful beauty, conscientiousness and simplicity.... He has the inexorable conscience of the artist, he always gives us his best; and that best is a style of great purity and felicity and sweetness, a style without strain and yet with an enviable aptness for the sudden inevitable word.... And yet that care, that deliberation is never tedious." The two chief characters of the story are a young man and a young woman. The young man sprung from the lowest stratum of Southern society, and the young woman from the highest. The story of the intermingling of their lives must be left for the reader to discover. As was so often the case during the political reconstruction of the South, the heroine passed from the sphere of the high social organization which existed at her birth to the humblest and most obscure hard manual work, while the hero rose from the lowest social condition to the highest intellectual plane, finding his development along the lines of religious and scientific thought. When they finally meet, the latter half of the story shows their influences on each other. The involved social and political conditions, the play and interaction of phases of life, so utterly different as those which form the experiences of these two people, have allowed Mr. Allen a wide scope for the subtle analysis of character of which in his exquisitely delicate art he is such a master. The trend of the book, and the religious crisis through which its hero passes, give the story its title; while an important part in the development of the hero's character is played by his passionate love story. A well known critic affirms that the story contains by far the finest and noblest work Mr. Allen has yet done, both in respect of that human passion and interest which characterizes his former work, and also in the tender reverential feeling with which he dwells on the simple rural life of the Kentucky which he loves so well. In spite of the reserve which characterizes the author, a few of the leading facts of his life have found their way into print, and may be of interest to many who read his books. He comes from Virginia ancestry and a pioneer Kentucky family. His mother's maiden name was Helen Foster, whose parents settled in Mississippi and were of Revolutionary Scotch-Irish stock of Pennsylvania. He was born on a farm in Fayette County seven miles from Lexington, Kentucky, where he spent his early childhood. He was educated in Kentucky University, and graduated in 1872. For several years afterward he taught in District schools, at first near his home and then in Missouri. He afterward became a private tutor, and finally accepted a Professorship at his Alma Mater which he exchanged for a similar position at Bethany College, West Virginia. He gave up this latter profession in 1884 and began his career as a writer in the city of New York. JAMES LANE ALLEN'S NEW NOVEL The Reign of Law A TALE OF THE KENTUCKY HEMP FIELDS Cloth, 8vo. Illustrated .50 FLUTE AND VIOLIN Cloth, 12mo, .50 BLUE GRASS REGION OF KENTUCKY Cloth, 12mo, .50 A KENTUCKY CARDINAL Cloth, 16mo, .00 AFTERMATH Cloth, 16mo, .00 TWO GENTLEMEN OF KENTUCKY Cloth, 18mo, .00 A SUMMER IN ARCADY Cloth, 12mo, .00 THE CHOIR INVISIBLE Cloth, 12mo, .50 The same Illustrated with Photogravures and Line Drawings, by ORSON LOWELL. Sateen. .50 PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page |
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