The San Francisco call., 1897-10-17
USEFUL FOR REFERENCE.

A DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN Authors
By Oscar Fay Adams Houghton, Mifliin & Co,
Boston and New York. Price S3.
The aspiring author whose manuscript has
yet to win the publicity of Irint viii derive
but little consolation from this book, but 10
the editor and the newspaper man, the L.
brarian ana the student of national literature
il will prove invaluable. Within the limits
OF handsome and not over large volume Mr.
Adams has collected the names of not less than
5000 American authors living and dead
Further than this he gives us. whenever the
particulars are obtainable brief biography
OF each writer, including his birthplace
career. list of works and the names OF the pub
fishers who brought them to light.
Though the notices in each case are neces-
sarily brief. a surprising number of details
have been filled in, and it is only in instan ces
where the Information is unattainable that
we are LETT in doubt as 10 the age or it may be
the date, OF death of the writer. OF course in
q compilation of this extensive character, ex-
tending over nearly 40 closely printed pages,
errors must occasionally occur, but Mr.
Adams may claim 10 have furnished, If not
an exhaustive, at least fairly inclusive list
of American authors. In his preface he ex-
plains that the volume is the outgrowth OF
has Handbook OF American Authors" which
was pu blished in 1884, all the features of the
earlier work which met with public approval
having been retained in this la ter and more
extensive volume. In few, and it certainly
must have been a very few instances, some
exceptionally modest author requested the
omission of his name and obligingly Mr..
Adams yielded. Yet, though he does not tell
US so, we imagine that his trouble was mainly
in the other direction and that he must have
been at infinite pains to exclude the many
who would willingly have had IN cir names
enrolled on this national register of literary
fame.
In photographic matters Mr.. Adams is evil
IDENTIFY a purist, for, contrary to the recognized
practice in the United States. be has seen fl
10 retain the "u'' in such words as colour,
favour, etc, except where they occur in titles
in which case the spelling of the original has
been followed. Another and still more marked
peculiarly of the compiler is his attempt to
tablish q new classification for writer's oil
poetry. He discriminates between poets and
verse writers, explaining his reasons thus:
"To apply the name Of poet 10 each and every
writer of verse would have been manifestly
unjust. The poets OF a generation are not nu-
merous, but the verse-mskers are very many.
If the term poet be loosely applied il loses it's
significance while to deny that name 10 many
a writer o. excellent verse is 10 do him no in
justice, but rather a cervice, it is no dispar-
agement to a private soldier not to be ad-
dressed as Colonel"
Obviously the task of making an arbitrary
classification of this kind is extremely diff .
cult, not to say delicate, and Mr.. Adams has
found 1t hard to live up TO his preface. Often
he dodges the question of an authors claim to
poetic laurels by using qualifying terms, such
as writer" 'litte rateur," Journalist"
etc. Thus. although Joaquin Miller is
a poet and prose writer" Bret Harte
is merely Californian writer" c.
+. Adams, the author of "Leedle Yawcob
Strauss" ana other poems, is on the other
hand simply "a humorous verse; writer of Bos-
ton." Whittier, Holmes Emerson. Longfel-
low are, however, unhesitatingly classed as
poets. but with regard 10 Walt Whitman Mr..
Adams loses confidence in his own Judgment
and assumes non-committal attitude: "a
poet regarding whose claim to the title mueh
con ntroversy has ragged" Nor in dealing with
prose writer's is Mr.. Adams more lepient Az
an example we quote his opinion of Julian
Hawthorne: "a novelist who has inherited
much of his fathers originality, but whose
work is often careless and hasty in construc
ton and of ephemeral interest only"