Literary History

The Rise of Local Color Fiction

Overview
In the United States the end of the Civil War gave way to a new genre of fiction called local color writing, which focuses on the customs, dialects, traditions, and other features of people from a specific region.

In local color fiction, setting is the most important feature. In a way, the setting is a character of its own. Characters take on traits that are typical in a particular region. Some say that characters in local color fiction represent stereotypes and are defined by their dialect and beliefs.

One of the most successful local color writers was Bret Harte, who wrote colorful tales of the California gold rush era. His stories of the American West were in high demand not only all over the country, but in England as well. After the grim years of the Civil War, his lighthearted stories provided people with comic relief.

The most celebrated local color fiction writer was Mark Twain. Although his most famous work is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it was his short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” that put Twain on the map as a local color fiction writer. Twain was a master at creating authentic characters through dialogue and setting details.

This era represented great change and upheaval, especially for women. During the Civil War, the suffrage movement was put to a stop. But by the late 1800s, women restored the fight for the right to vote with a vengeance. Ida B. Wells, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman all contributed great works of literature at this time.

This era also saw the creation of several women’s magazines. Ladies Home Journal,Good Housekeeping,Harper’s Bazaar, and McCall’s are magazines first published in the late 1800s that are still in publication today. These magazines gave women a platform for publishing their poems and short stories.

Bibliography
Bret Harte’s Gold Rush: Outcasts of Poker Flat, the Luck of Roaring Camp, Tennessee’s Partner, and Other Favorites. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1996. Includes fifteen stories about the gold rush.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. A collection of twenty-seven pieces that Twain wrote while a journalist in Nevada and California.

American Local Color Writing, 1880–1920. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998. A comprehensive collection of short stories by local color fiction writers from around the country.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Bantam Classics, 1981. Mark Twain’s classic novel of life along the Mississippi River.

O Pioneers! New York: Vintage, 1992. Willa Cather’s first great novel, it tells the story of life on the Nebraska prairie.

Web links
Women’s Magazines
http://www.magazineart.org/general/womens/
Discover which of today’s women’s magazines were published as far back as 1867. See the covers of some of the first issues of Woman’s Home Companion,The American Woman, and Good Housekeeping.

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909)
http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/jewett.htm
Read all about this celebrated author. Here you will find full texts of her articles published in Atlantic Monthly,Scribner’s, and Harper’s, as well as chapters from The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Library of Southern Literature: Regionalism and Local Color
http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/regionalism.html
Read articles about popular Southern Regionalist writers, including Kate Chopin, George Washington Cable, and Joel Chandler Harris.

Mark Twain’s Interactive Scrapbook
http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/
Discover photos and illustrations of the people and places that inspired this great local color. Find out who the true Mark Twain is through his writing and collection of artifacts.