SOURCE: "Ideological "Snap-Shots" of the New York Metropolis: Matthews's Fiction," in Theodore Roosevelt, Brander Matthews, and the Politics of American Literature, University of Tennessee Press, 1992, pp. 145-63.

In the following excerpt, Oliver reviews Matthews' three novels and considers the effect of his attitudes about race, class, and gender on his vision and practice of Realism.

In addition to his voluminous scholarship and criticism, Matthews produced a sizable and varied corpus of fiction: three full-length novels, several books of short stories, and a juvenile romance. Matthews admitted that many of his early stories, written during the late 1870s and early 1880s, were done purely for fun and were imitative of the "clever" but superficial fictions of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. But, as he crusaded for Howells and literary realism during the eighties, Matthews became increasingly interested in exploiting the "local color" potential of his beloved New York. As he explains...