include The Way Some People Live (1943), The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953), The Wapshot Scandal (1964), The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964), Bullet Park (1969), and Falconer (1978).
Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932) Chesnutt was born in Cleveland to free African American parents from North Carolina. Though largely self- taught, he worked variously as an educator, reporter, accountant, and attorney before embarking on a literary career. Though best known for his collections of short stories (The onjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth, both 1899), and for his use of regional dialect in the manner of Joel Chandler Harris, Chesnutt also produced a biography of Frederick Douglass (1899) and published three novels during his lifetime. The House Behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901) confront issues of racial identification and betrayal; The Colonel's Dream (1905) and another novel left unpublished at his death also center on the theme of racial injustice.
Lydia Maria Child (1802-80) Born in Medford, Massachusetts, she was the sister of Unitarian minister Convers Francis. From 1825 to 1828 she taught school at Watertown, Massachusetts, where she established the Juvenile Miscellany (1826). In 1828 she married attorney David Lee Child. Both she and her husband were dedicated abolitionists, and in 1833 she published An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans; from 1840 to 1844 she was editor of The National Anti-Slavery Standard. In addition to her abolitionist activities, she was active in the causes of sex education and female suffrage. Though best known as an essayist, Child also wrote fictional works, including three historical romances: Hobomok (1824), The Rebels (1825), and Philothea (1836).
Kate Chopin (1851–1904) Born Katherine O'Flaherty, Chopin grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, in an affluent Catholic family. She married Oscar Chopin at the age of -766- twenty and moved with him to Louisiana. When Chopin was thirtyfour her husband died, and she raised their children alone. During this period, Chopin began to write professionally, though her efforts at composition were always combined with child care duties. Chopin's work explores the contrasts between Northern and Southern sensibilities, as well as the continuous tension between creativity and domesticity that Chopin believed must necessarily mark the work of a woman artist. Chopin's first novel, At Fault (1860), was followed by a collection of short stories entitled Bayou Folk (1894). A second collection of short pieces of fiction, A Night in Acadie (1897), established Chopin's reputation as a representative of the local color movement. Creole culture and language and the visual landscape of Louisiana found expression in Chopin's fiction. While The Awakening (1899) is largely viewed today as Chopin's literary masterpiece, the book was widely condemned at the time of its publication. The morbid sensuality of Edna Pontellier and the novel's exploration of a new and more independent kind of woman led to its critical rejection. Both the fictional Edna Pontellier and Chopin herself languished in literary obscurity until the 1960s. An increasing sensitivity to the particular problems of the female artist and a renewed interest on the part of publishers in women writers led to a reexamination and reappraisal of Chopin's work. Frequently anthologized today, Chopin now appears to hold a secure place within American literary history.
Louis Chu (1915-70) Chu was born in a village just outside Canton, China. He moved to Newark, New Jersey, at the age of nine. He received his degree in English from New York University, and later served in the United States Army. Ironically, perhaps, Chu was stationed in Kunming in southeastern China. After the conclusion of World War II, Chu lived in New York City, operating a Chinatown record shop and working as the city's only Chinese disc jockey. Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) reflects Chu's concerns about the Asian American experience.
Sandra Cisneros (1954-) Born in Chicago, Cisneros is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Interested in the manner in which race and gen-767- der structure her own life, Cisneros explores these themes in poetry and stories that have been described as 'international graffiti.' Her books include Bad Boys (1980), The House on Mango Street (1985), and My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987).
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) The eleventh child of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper, James Kent Cooper (he added Fenimore after his father's death) was born in Burlington, New Jersey, and spent his youth in the still wild country around Cooperstown, on Otsego Lake in New York, where he gained firsthand acquaintance with the Native Americans and the landscape that would be featured in his Leatherstocking tales. He attended Yale for two years, but a youthful prank resulted in his dismissal in 1806. A stint in the Navy proved dull; in 1811 he resigned and married Susan De Lancey, who bore him six children. A famous anecdote recounts the beginning of Cooper's literary career: dissatisfied with a novel he was reading, he declared that he could do better himself; his wife's challenge to do so resulted in his first book, Precaution (1820). Writing fired Cooper's imagination and sense of adventure, and his second novel (The Spy [1821]) was a success. In addition to the Leatherstocking tales, the best known of which are The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Deerslayer (1841), he was a prolific writer in a variety of modes, from historical romance to social satire, producing scholarly naval histories, a utopian allegory, and even a precursor of the mystery novel. He died on the eve of his sixty-second birthday, September 14, 1851.
Robert Lowell Coover (1932-) Born in Iowa, Coover served in the United States Navy and later studied literature at the University of Chicago. Innovative and experimental, his postmodern fiction often collapses traditional narrative structure to help explore the breakdown of social conventions and values in American society. His novels include The Origin of the Brunists (1966), The Universal Baseball Association (1968), Spanking the Maid (1981), and Gerald's Party (1986). -768-
Stephen Crane (1871–1900) Crane, a native of Newark, New Jersey, attended Lafayette College and Syracuse University (a year each) before moving to New York City, where he earned a meager living as a free-lance reporter. His first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), was published with money borrowed from his brother, and was a financial failure, but it did impress Hamlin Garland, who brought it to the attention of William Dean Howells. Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, was published in 1895. Because of its brilliant depiction of war, Crane found himself in demand as a war correspondent. Returning from an assignment in Cuba, Crane was shipwrecked, an experience that resulted in The Open Boat (1897), but his health was broken, and he died before his twenty-ninth birthday.
Maria Cummins (1827-66) Maria Susanna Cummins was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and was educated mainly at home by her father, a local judge. Her early stories appeared in various periodicals, most notably the Atlantic Monthly. In 1854 she published her first (and most popular) novel, The Lamplighter, the story of an orphan girl's struggle to independence. Cummins never married, and lived a quiet, domestic life with her family in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her other novels include Mabel Vaughan (1857), El Fureidis (1860), and Haunted Hearts (1864).
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-82) Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard Law School, and was a founder of the Free Soil Party. In his junior year at Harvard, his studies were interrupted when he contracted a case of measles that affected his eyesight. In an attempt to recoup his health, he signed onto the brig Pilgrim, bound for California, as an ordinary seaman. His narrative of the voyage, describing the hardships and discipline aboard ship, was published anonymously in 1840 as Two Years Before the Mast; in 1841 he published
