SOURCE: "Place and Race in American Fiction," in American Fiction: An Historical and Critical Survey, D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936, pp. 332-42.

In the following excerpt, Quinn discusses Woolson 's ability to blend vibrant descriptions of physical settings with the actions of realistic characters.

Usually a novelist's impulse to deal with the life of a locality was confined to one section, but Constance Fenimore Woolson dealt not only with the North-west and the South but also with the European scene. She was born in Claremont, New Hampshire, in 1840, her mother, Hannah Cooper Pomeroy Woolson, being the niece of James Fenimore Cooper. She was educated in Cleveland, Ohio, and as a girl spent her summers at Mackinac Island in the straits between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. In 1858 she graduated from Madame Chegary's school in New York City, which was to appear in her novel Anne, and began her contributions to...