An American Palette.

After the Civil War the United States was still a nation of disparate cultures—each region marked by distinctive customs, values, and economic conditions; each region struggling to find its niche in a newly reconstituted union. Nowhere was the nation's inherent diversity more evident than in its literature. The advent of literary realism in the late nineteenth century brought into focus the kaleidoscopic cast of American life. A group of realists known collectively as "local colorists" recorded the intonations and variations in American regional cultures. Perhaps the defining genre of the era, local-color fiction captured the dialects, the daily routines, the physical landscapes, and the emotional makeup of a multicultural nation.

Undermined by Sentiment?

Local-color writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), and Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) were among the most popular writers of their time. Yet...