SOURCE: "DuBose Heyward: Memorialist and Realist," in The Georgia Review, Vol. V, No. 3, Fall, 1951, pp. 335-4.

In the following essay, Harrigan examines the primary themes in Heyward's writing, while touching on elements of style, tone, and characterization.

If I did not know Mr. Heyward is the author, I could easily have imagined Mamba's Daughters to have been written by some fly-by-night millionaire novelist from the Riviera or Gopher Prairie, who put his yacht into Charleston harbor for the winter season and picked up enough local color to fill out his contract for a fifteenth best-selling novel.

—Donald Davidson

Among Southern writers of recent times whose achievements have gone largely unrecognized is DuBose Heyward, who prior to his tragically early death in 1940 had come to represent to perfection the Southern writer's image of the tradition-conscious artist.

Unlike Faulkner's work, Heyward's novels do not constitute a myth or legend of...