CREATING THE MODERN AMERICAN NOVEL

Here's a book that many will welcome enthusiastically -- a survey of the background of the American novel, the development of the school of realism, an analysis of the leading novelists of the past two decades, their contribution to the trends of their day and of the present. Not -- except incidentally --biographical, except where background, training, experience and personality played important part in the direction and scope of their work. Carl Van Doren's What Is American Literature (Morrow) fell down a bit when he hurried through the moderns; this book skimps the foundations, and stresses the moderns. Together, they supply a very interesting study of the development of the novel, essential for those seriously or academically interested in the subject.