SOURCE: Cary, Richard. “Mystique of the Mountains.” In Mary N. Murfree, pp. 45-78. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967.

In the following essay, Cary examines Murfree's mountain fiction in detail.

The first story to be printed under the name of Charles Egbert Craddock, “The Dancin' Party at Harrison's Cove,” was originally intended as the opening chapter of a novel that Miss Murfree and her sister had planned to write. After the customary family reading, it was decided that this segment had a unity of its own and should be sent to the Atlantic Monthly as it stood. Howells published the story in May, 1878, and in the next six years Miss Murfree sold seven others of the same stripe to the Atlantic. On Aldrich's recommendation Houghton Mifflin gathered these eight stories and issued them in 1884 under the title of In the Tennessee Mountains. “The Dancin' Party” had revealed Miss Murfree to...