Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/215

in the country. Mr. Sparks also edited the writings of Washington and Franklin, with lives of each, the diplomatic correspondence of the revolution, and the correspondence of public men with Washington. Of the many biographies of public men produced during this period, the most prominent are those of Josiah Quincy, jr., by his son Josiah Quincy, of Josiah Quincy by his son Edmund Quincy, of Elbridge Gerry by J. T. Austin, of James Otis by William Tudor, of Joseph Reed by his grandson W. B. Reed, of William Wirt by John P. Kennedy, of Thomas Jefferson by George Tucker and by H. S. Randall, of John Adams and John Quincy Adams by Charles Francis Adams, of James Madison by W. C. Rives, of Joseph Story by his son W. W. Story, of Alexander Hamilton by his son J. C. Hamilton, of Timothy Pickering by his son Octavius Pickering (the last 3 vols. by C. W. Upham), of Henry Clay by Calvin Colton, of Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Horace Greeley, and B. F. Butler by James Parton, of John P. Kennedy by H. T. Tuckerman, and of Count Rumford by G. E. Ellis, some of which have obtained a wide popularity. Among special biographies of American subjects are the “Life of William Ellery Channing,” by his nephew William Henry Channing; the “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” by W. H. Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Freeman Clarke; the “Life of Daniel Boone,” by Timothy Flint; lives of Marion, Greene, and Captain John Smith, by W. G. Simms; the lives of the Indian chiefs Joseph Brant and Red Jacket, by W. L. Stone; the life of Bishop A. W. Griswold, by J. S. Stone; “Memoir of Rev. Dr. Buckminster and Joseph Stevens Buckminster,” by Mrs. Eliza Buckminster Lee; the “Life of Theophilus Parsons,” by his son Theophilus Parsons; “Memoirs of Nathanael Emmons,” by E. A. Park; the “Life of Washington Irving,” by his nephew Pierre M. Irving; of Nathanael Greene, by his grandson, G. W. Greene; of Daniel Webster, by G. T. Curtis; of Abraham Lincoln, by Ward H. Lamon; of Theodore Parker, by John Weiss, and a later and more popular one by O. B. Frothingham; of W. H. Prescott, by George Ticknor; of Fitz-Greene Halleck, by J. G. Wilson; of John Todd, by his son John E. Todd; and John Bigelow's edition of Franklin's autobiography; besides many biographical sketches by Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, G. E. Ellis, Edward and Alexander H. Everett, H. A. Garland, C. C. Felton, C. W. Upham, Henry Wheaton, W. H. Prescott, Henry Reed, G. S. Hillard, William Gammell, J. T. Headley, John Sanderson, R. T. Conrad, C. A. Goodrich, M. L. Davis, Alden Bradford, S. L. Knapp, Nicholas Biddle, Epes Sargent, Richard Frothingham, B. J. Lossing, G. L. Duyckinck, Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. E. F. Ellet, and others. To this class also belong such works as the “Lives of American Loyalists,” by Lorenzo Sabine; the “Personal Memoirs” of Joseph T. Buckingham; the “Reminiscences” of Bishop Philander Chase; “Recollections of a Busy Life,” by Horace Greeley; “Autobiography of Lyman Beecher;” the “Ten Years of Preacher Life” and other works of William Henry Milburn; the “Threading my Way” of Robert Dale Owen; and “The Life, Letters, and Journals” of George Ticknor, edited by G. S. Hillard. The contributors to miscellaneous and foreign biography comprise J. S. C. Abbott, author of a “Life of Napoleon,” R. W. Griswold, H. W. Herbert, Samuel Osgood, J. Milton Mackie, Hannah F. Lee, X. Donald McLeod, Alfred Lee, Richard Hildreth, F. L. Hawks, Bishop J. R. Bayley, R. H. Wilde, and many others. Female biography has been comprehensively related by Mrs. S. J. Hale in her “Woman's Record,” a sketch of distinguished women in all times. The principal biographical dictionaries are those of William Allen and Francis S. Drake, both devoted to American subjects, and the “Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology,” by Joseph Thomas, a valuable and comprehensive work; besides which a “Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers” has been published by S. Spooner, a “Cyclopædia of Music” by J. W. Moore, a handbook of painters, sculptors, and other artists by Clara Erskine Clement, and a “Book of the Artists” by Henry T. Tuckerman.—Washington Irving, though not exclusively a writer of prose fiction, was the first American whose fame in this department extended beyond the limits of his native country; and his “Sketch Book,” “Knickerbocker's History of New York," “Bracebridge Hall,” and “Tales of a Traveller,” first introduced to a European public between 1820 and 1830, attracted immediate attention by their imaginative power, by their fine pathos and humor, and by the singularly pure and graceful style in which they were expressed. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) has the credit of giving the first decided impulse to romantic fiction in the new world, and through his works American literature became first generally known abroad. His “Spy,” his nautical tales, including “The Pilot” and “The Red Rover,” and above all his series of Indian stories, abounding in lively pictures of forest life, took a strong hold upon the popular mind in both hemispheres. He was deficient in some of the requisites of a novelist; but his faculty of description, and quick appreciation of what was tangible and characteristic in his native land, enabled him to gain a universal distinction almost unsurpassed in his field. The success of Cooper gave to the novel of adventure and backwoods life, or that founded upon colonial and revolutionary incidents, a popularity which caused it for a long time to be the chief form of fiction cultivated; and among many meritorious works of this class may be mentioned “The Dutchman's Fireside” and “Westward Ho” of James