Preface 7
Introduction 11
Part Ⅰ:EUROPEAN MASTERS 17
Introduction 19
Dickens and Thackeray 23
My Favorite Novelist and His Best Book 28
Bjornstjerne Bjornson 31
Norwegian Romances 33
Ivan Turgenev 40
A Turgenev Novel 42
Giovanni Verga 47
The House by the Medlar-Tree 48
Armando Palacio Valdés 52
Marta y Maria 55
Scum 58
Benito Pérez Galdós 60
Dona Perfecta,A Great Novel 63
Henrik Ibsen 69
A Question of Propriety 71
Ibsenism 74
Thomas Hardy 77
Pleasure from Tragedy 79
Emile Zola 83
Zola's Naturalism 86
Degeneration 88
Leo Tolstoy 93
The Philosophy of Tolstoy 96
Part Ⅱ:AMERICAN WRITERS 109
Introduction 111
Howells and the Atlantic 114
Recollections of an Atlantic Editorship 117
John William De Forest 139
The Stamp of Verity 141
Mark Twain 146
Mark Twain:An Inquiry 149
Edward Eggleston 155
Flat Creek 158
A Tale of the Heroic Age 160
Henry James 163
James's Hawthorne 166
John Hay 171
A Social Study 174
Edward Bellamy 180
The Romantic Imagination 184
Hamlin Garland 190
Mr.Garland's Books 193
Stephen Crane 200
New York Low Life in Fiction 205
Frank Norris 212
A Case in Point 216
Notes 219
Index 222