When Hamilton Wright Mabie died, the man assigned to write his obituary for the New York Globe dawdled for several days before producing a single unpublishable sentence: "Hamilton Wright Mabie conducted young ladies into the suburbs of culture and left them there." As an oblique reference to a column Mabie had written for the Ladies' Home Journal (1902-1912), as well as to his long list of publications designed to provide spiritual uplift to the general public, this is a valid statement. But in its disregard for Mabie's vital involvement in the literary life of his period, it is fragmentary and unfair. Regrettably, this picture of Mabie as a dispenser of cultural and moralistic pap has persisted for nearly three quarters of a century, obscuring his minor but very real contribution to literary criticism. The books Mabie published on literary subjects, especially during the 1890s, offer a valuable index...