SOURCE: "Dorothy Canfield," in Our Short Story Writers, Moffat, Yard & Company, 1920, pp. 41-54.

In the following essay, Williams surveys Fisher's life and works of short fiction.

In the twentieth century it is possible for one, before she is forty years of age, to be a doctor of philosophy, master of half a dozen languages, a successful novelist, storywriter, wife, mother, and war worker. Dorothy Canfield is all of these, and in addition, after much travel and living abroad, she is an American of Americans. Her Americanism is the essence of her greatness and her significance for the literature of to-day and to-morrow. It is the foundation on which rise her achievements.

How has she managed to do so much? First, the circumstances of her birth were favorable. Daughter of the late James Hulme Canfield, who was President of the University of Kansas at the time she was born...