On 31 December 1900, the same day that Thomas Hardy penned "The Darkling Thrush," Maurice Hewlett wrote to his wife:

I hope I have a good deal of work before me,--indeed I hope that my name will be known, if known at all, as of a man who led the 20th Century, rather than one who came at the end of the 19th. I like to look on what I have done so far as a beginning; but if I die next year, it is a beginning which I hope will count for something. Whether I live or die, I hope it will be as a baddish man, trying to be better, and as a writer taking his art seriously.

Though he did not begin writing until age thirty-six and almost immediately was labeled a writer of romances, Hewlett certainly took his art seriously. He achieved both popular and...