Obscure Early Midwestern Authors > Likes and Comments

Claude C. Washburn (1883-1926) is mentioned in Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street (the two men were friends), and one can detect a slight prefiguring of Lewis in Gerald Northrop (1914), Washburn’s long first novel, a Bildungsroman that probably scandalized some of its readers because the protagonist has a lengthy and obviously sexual affair with a woman whom he does not in the end marry (and who has a prior history of such affairs herself). I wish I could say that I enjoyed the novel more, but I did not find the self-obsessed Gerald to be good company (especially over 500+ pages). He is one of those young moneyed types that would benefit from needing to make a living, instead of indulging his own every whim without even thinking about the implications. Henry James can get away with writing about this class without their narrow world becoming a liability, but not every writer is Henry James.

Another Midwestern author who's (perhaps unjustly) obscure today is Ottilie A. Liljencrantz (1876-1910), who was born, and spent her life, in Chicago. (Part of her obscurity may be due to her early death at 34 from cancer.) Her father was an immigrant from Sweden, and her Viking ancestry was a major influence on her mostly historical fiction (at least five of her books have Viking/Scandinavian settings). As a kid, I read her novel The Ward of King Canute and liked it, though I've never reviewed it (and need a re-read, to do it justice).