SOURCE: "The Era of Southern Themes and Writers," in A History of American Literature since 1870, 1915. Reprint by Cooper Square Publishers, 1968, pp. 294-321.

Pattee was a widely respected educator, editor, and critic. He is considered one of the most influential figures in the decline of English literary colonialism and the subsequent declaration of American literary independence in the early years of the twentieth century. In the following excerpt, originally published in 1915, he offers a stylistic analysis of Murfree's work.

Criticism of the Craddock novels must begin always with the statement that their author was not a native of the region with which she dealt. She had been born into an old Southern family with wealth and traditions, and she had been reared in a city amid culture and a Southern social régime. The Tennessee mountains she knew only as a summer visitor may know them. For fifteen summers...