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Mary Noailles Murfree.
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Mary Noailles Murfree's writing career spans almost fifty years. During that period she wrote eighteen novels and six volumes of short fiction on a variety of distinctly American subjects: polite Sout...
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Most of the fifty short stories that Mary Noailles Murfree wrote in a career of almost fifty years were about the mountaineers of East Tennessee; but the dominant theme of all her fiction is, as she s...
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In the following review of Murfree's The Bushwhackers, and Other Stories, the critic says that a less-known author might not have been able to publish such ordinary stories.
Miss Murfree'...
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In the following essay, Cary examines Murfree's mountain fiction in detail.
The first story to be printed under the name of Charles Egbert Craddock, “The Dancin' Party at Harrison...
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In the following essay, Warfel says that Murfree is less a typical local color writer than a skillful manipulator of literary materials in the romantic mode.
It is good to have a new reprinting of In ...
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In the following essay, Loyd briefly describes Murfree's life and works, urging Tennesseans to rediscover her.
Tennessee's list of literary personalities is a long one, but no name on th...
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In the following essay, Lanier presents an edited version of an 1885 newspaper interview with Murfree.
While working on her novel The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains,1 Mary Noailles Murfree spent...
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In the following essay, Ensor offers a detailed analysis of the actual geographical areas portrayed in Murfree's book of short stories, concluding that Murfree's descriptions were often ...
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In the following essay, Dunn reevaluates Murfree in light of previous criticism and concludes that Murfree's stereotypical portrayals of Tennessee life obscured a true understanding of the moun...
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In the following essay, Young places Murfree in the literary context of her times.
At the end of the Civil War there was intense concern for and interest in things southern. In 1873, Edward King, on a...
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In the following essay, Marshall posits the theory that Murfree was an “ecofeminist”—a writer whose women characters had a special relationship with nature and whose male characte...
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In the following excerpt, Baskervill surveys Murfree 's work, noting influences on her writng, and commenting on her characterizations, descriptions, use of humor, and literary style in general...
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Brooks was an American poet. In the following excerpt, he praises Murfree's writing for its realistic rendering of a previously "unknown human sphere, " but finds the use of diale...
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In the following excerpt, Dillingham links Murfree's short fiction with both the genteel tradition and the school of realism.
In 1885, the year when William Dean Howells published The Rise of ...
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In the excerpt below, Cary discusses the significance of the mountain milieu in Murfree's short fiction.
The overwhelming central fact of life in Miss Murfree's tales of Tennessee are th...
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Warfel was an American educator, editor, and critic with a special interest in tracing the development of American intellectual and literary life. In the following essay, he explores Murfree's ...
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In the essay below, Cary offers a favorable assessment of In the Tennessee Mountains.
As a purveyor of attractive fictions, Mary Murfree's heart was indubitably in the highlands. Of the eightee...
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In the essay below, Nilles examines Murfree's stereotypical heroines.
". . . gals air cur'ous critters, ye know yerself; thar's no sort o' countin' on ...
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In the following excerpt, Carleton evaluates Murfree's place in American literature and discusses her ultimate inability to fulfill the promise of her early short fiction.
Mary Noailles Murfre...
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Fisher is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt, he provides a thematic and stylistic overview of Murfree's "The Visitants from Yesterday."
The name "Ch...
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In the excerpt below, Fisher surveys the comic elements in Murfree's short fiction.
Placing Mary Murfree as a humorist is analogous to the similar positioning of one of her American literary p...
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The anonymous critic, evaluating The Bushwhackers and Other Stories, finds the volume stylistically weaker and less interesting oveall than Murfree's previous work.
Charles Egbert Craddock is t...
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In the following excerpt, the critics recount Murfree's association with the Atlantic Monthly magazine.
It was in May, 1878, during the administration of Mr. Howells, that the readers of the At...
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In the following essay, the reviewer provides a favorable evaluation of The Frontiersmen.
With a large class of novel readers there is always a keen sympathy with the men and women who blazed the trai...
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In the following excerpt, Baskette judges Murfree's mountain stories fresh and unique, and believes they constitute her strongest claim to a lasting place in Southern literature.
In general, it...
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In the following excerpt, Toulmin assesses Murfree's role as social historian.
Nowhere have more notable expositions been presented of the character and scenes in any particular locality, than...
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Pattee was a widely respected educator, editor, and critic. He is considered one of the most influential figures in the decline of English literary colonialism and the subsequent declaration of Americ...
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In the following essay, the critic outlines Murfree's career.
A generation ago, when Mary N. Murfree wrote her romance of Tennessee, The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, the emphasis in A...
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In the following excerpt, Pattee discusses Murfree's place in what he calls "the reign of dialect" during the 1880s and her influence on the subsequent generation of writers.
The...
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