Ellen Glasgow, one of many southern writers whose talent Walter Hines Page was quick to perceive and encourage (he published her early work The Voice of the People in 1900), wrote to him in 1902: "When I hear ... of the many forms your amazing energies acquire, I begin, indeed, to regard you as a kind of animated Colossus, or a second Theodore Roosevelt." Roosevelt, along with Woodrow Wilson, William Graham Sumner, and Frederic Harrison, was one of the many nonfiction writers whom Page considered "literary" and was enthusiastic about publishing.

Page's career was indeed multifaceted. He was one of the first fellows of the Johns Hopkins University (1876-1878) and a teacher of English literature and rhetoric in Louisville, Missouri (1878-1880). After marrying Willa Alice Wilson in August 1880 (three children would be born of the union), Page became an investigative journalist for the Missouri St. Joseph Gazette and subsequently a writer...