Mary Noailles Murfree Summary

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... Read more

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'... Read more

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 ... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more