Though little read today, Edgar Fawcett during his lifetime was well known as novelist, poet, dramatist, and essayist. Decidedly a minor figure in American letters, Fawcett was nonetheless one of the earliest purveyors of realism and naturalism in American literature. His fiction, which almost exclusively treats the New York of his day, generally condemns the wealthy Dutch aristocracy, nouveau riche plutocrats, and corrupt politicians that abounded in his native city. He also wrote several slum novels and some supernatural fiction. The prolific Fawcett produced such a quantity of material that contemporary critic Richard Henry Stoddard lamented, "Won't somebody please turn this Fawcett off"" While much of his work is barely above the level of hack writing, Fawcett in the 1870s and 1880s began to blaze a trail that more talented authors such as William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, and Stephen Crane pursued in the development of realism.

Fawcett...