SOURCE: "Local Color and Literary Artistry: Mary Noailles Murfree's In the Tennessee Mountains," in The Southern Literary Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Fall, 1970, pp. 154-63.

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 role as a local colorisi and praises the organization of her stories.

It is good to have a new reprinting of In the Tennessee Mountains, originally published in 1884. Not only do the eight stories demonstrate the geographical and human substance of local-color fiction, which Professor Nathalia Wright analyzes in detail in her Introduction, but they also make clear the fact that Mary Noailles Murfree was more concerned to manipulate artistic literary techniques than to photograph the places and people. Less than most local colorists did she compel attention through attempts at verisimilitude; mountains, rivers, roads, clearings...