James Brander Matthews, though almost unknown today, was one of the major critics of his generation. In December 1893, shortly before he turned forty-two, a number of the decade's most prominent literary figures--among them Charles Dudley Warner, Richard Watson Gilder, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain--toasted his achievements at a dinner in his honor at Sherry's in New York City. Most of Twain's keynote address (called by Matthews "absolutely and without exception the funniest speech I ever heard in my life" and considered by Twain one of his own best efforts) capitalized on Matthews's rather formidable name: "BRAND-er MATH-thews! B-r-r-r-an-der Math-thews! makes you think of an imprisoned god of the Underworld muttering imprecations and maledictions." But in the end Twain says, "Let him have full credit. When he got his name it was only good to curse with. Now it is good to conjure with."

Matthews's contemporaries acknowledged him...