During the last quarter of the nineteenth century George Parsons Lathrop was a major figure in American letters, helping to establish realism as the central mode of literary expression and identifying the novel as one of the major artistic forms of modern culture. He also was an astute student of earlier American literature and an influential spokesman for making women writers a part of the mainstream of American literature.

Lathrop was born in Hawaii in 1851 to Frances Maria Smith and George A. Lathrop, chief administrator of the U.S. marine hospital in Honolulu. In 1859 Lathrop came to New York where he attended private schools. From 1867 to 1870 he pursued his studies in Dresden, Germany, where he met Rose Hawthorne, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Upon his return to America he attended Columbia Law School for one term and then worked briefly in a law office in New York. He married...