160 PRIDE AN D PROTEST

Next on the agenda would be Charles Major's When Knighthood Was in Flower and George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark, nearly perfect examples of the historical romance genre. Unless the reader is totally captivated by the latter, he or she can in good conscience skip the rest of the Graustarkian novels of McCutcheon. A must read, however, is Major's Bears of Blue River for all the reasons discussed in the text. Move on to Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire and The Gentleman from Indiana. Beaucaire will probably engage the contemporary reader only for its historical interest; it is not nearly as palatable as When Knighthood Was in Flower. But Gentleman is enjoyable on its own merits and is indispensable before reading the rest of Tarkington. Now the reader can begin to explore Meredith Nicholson's The House of a Thousand Candles and A Hoosier Chronicle, these two being the most important titles with which to familiarize oneself. The rest of Nicholson's novels can be sampled at random for a fair representation of this author's fiction. It is useful, however, to read some of his essays in collections such as The Hoosiers and Old Familiar Faces for additional insight into both Nicholson and his contemporaries, and the Hoosier literary scene. Read Gene Stratton-Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost at this juncture for its intentional and effective use of an Indiana setting for a romance novel, but save the rest of Stratton-Porter for later reading. Finally, return to McCutcheon. No Hoosier should begin and end his or her consideration of George Barr McCutcheon with Graustark. Without reading both Viola Gwyn and The Sherrods the reader will have missed out on McCutcheon's best work and two wonderful examples of early realism. Those two novels will be a good transition to the social history novels of Tarkington and to Dreiser and his contribution to natu­ ralism. One should read Tarkington's Growth trilogy in its entirety. The Turmoil and The Magnificent Ambersons are still in print. Alice Adams, a delightful novel that begins to probe the phenomenon of working women in the new industrial society, is still in print. Mter Alice it would be appropriate to read Dreiser's Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt for a darker image of the class