James Lane Allen, best known for such idealistic and romantic novels as A Kentucky Cardinal (1895) and The Choir Invisible (1897), spent his writing apprenticeship in literary criticism. Once his career as short-story writer and novelist was launched with the publication of his first book, Flute and Violin and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances (1891), he seldom glanced back to the published essay. He let his fiction express his critical viewpoint.

Allen's brief career as a practicing critic took place almost exclusively in the 1880s, the decade of the romance-realism wars. He enlisted under the fair banner of literary taste, tradition, and idealism, and he pointed his genteel lance at the realists--most notably William Dean Howells and Henry James. His heroes among authors were the undisputed greats of the past, the ancient Greeks and William Shakespeare; his sole example of a contemporary star was Rudyard Kipling. Allen's relatively few critical essays...