SOURCE: White, George Leroy, Jr. “H. H. Boyesen: A Note on Immigration.” American Literature 13, no. 4 (January 1942): 363-71.

In the following excerpt, White provides a close reading of Boyesen's fiction and discusses how it portrays the immigrant experience.

American fiction in the 1870's and 1880's began to become conscious of “place and race,” and an obvious reason for this interest was the fact of immigration.¹ Waves of people from foreign lands were breaking across this country. The American writer who was at all aware of the subject matter around him could not fail to become interested in ascertaining how much these foreign people were contributing to the growth of our national mind. Many writers turned their attention to immigration. Just the quantity of the material they produced is noteworthy. Almost every issue of the Atlantic Monthly and Scribner's Monthly (including its continuation under the name of the Century), from...