Gloria Mundi

by Harold Frederic, Larry Bromley (Editor)

Book by Frederic, Harold

481 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1898

About the author

Frederic was born in Utica, New York, to Presbyterian parents. After his father was killed in a train accident when Frederic was 18 months old, the boy was raised primarily by his mother. He finished school at fifteen, and soon began work as a photographer. For four years he was a photographic touch-up artist in his hometown and in Boston. In 1875 he began work as a proofreader for the Utica Herald and then the Utica Daily Observer. Frederic later became a reporter, and by 1882 he was editor of the Albany Evening Journal.

Two years later he went to live in England as London correspondent of the New York Times. He retained this job for the rest of his life. He was soon recognized for his ability both as a writer and as a talker. He wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (1896), better known by its American title, The Damnation of Theron Ware, followed by Gloria Mundi (1898), that his gifts as a novelist were fully realized. Jonathan Yardley called Damnation "a minor classic of realism".

Frederic married Grace Green Williams in 1877, and they had five children. Sometime between 1889 and 1890, he met Kate Lyon, who became his mistress. Frederic and Lyon established a second household, living openly together; they had three children. Lyon was a Christian Scientist who, when Frederic suffered a stroke in 1898, tried to cure him through faith healing. After his death, she was tried on charges of manslaughter and acquitted. Frederic was interred in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, New York. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jim Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harold Frederic, if remembered at all, is known at the author of a late 19th Century American classic, The Damnation of Theron Ware. It is the only American novel I would put in the same category of fin-de-siecle fiction as the works of Hardy, Stevenson, Conrad and Wilde. I am a big fan of that book, but I had never read anything else by the author. I picked up Gloria Mundi and was quickly fascinated by it. It seemed to be cut from the same cloth as TDOTW-- concerned with feminisim and The New Woman, the degeneration in an ancient family, the Jewish question, and English class/economic struggles. But while it touched on all of these topics, it never really was about any of them. It’s almost as though Frederic took a survey of popular literature’s themes of the day and threw them all in a blender. It’s a hopeless mishmash—no characters are developed or believable, no topic is satisfactorily resolved, and the romantic happy ending does not make any sense at all. Up until the last page the author seems to struggle against the dictates of a happy ending to sell the work. Throw in the fact that it is poorly written, and you have a failure. Perhaps Frederic truly was a one hit wonder.