The Market Place

Last updated

The Market Place is a novel by American author Harold Frederic. It was published posthumously in 1899, following his death the previous year.

The book's publication and success as a bestseller led to a conflict over Frederic's estate between his wife Grace Frederic and mistress Kate Lyon. This resulted in a scandal involving much of London's Victorian society. The resulting furor led to the jailing of Lyon on charges of manslaughter at the behest of his wife. Another notable American figure of the time, Cora Crane, the companion of author Stephen Crane, sheltered his three children with Lyon while she was jailed pending trial. She was acquitted. [1]

The novel was among the best selling books in the United States in 1899.

Reception

American author Willa Cather wrote: [2]

Unusual interest is attached to the posthumous work of that great man whose career ended so prematurely and so tragically. The story is a study in the ethics and purposes of money-getting, in the romantic element in modern business. In it finance is presented not as being merely the province of shrewdness, or greediness, or petty personal gratification, but of great projects, of great brain-battles, a field for the exercising of talent, daring, imagination, appealing to the strength of a strong man, filling the same place in men's lives that was once filled by the incentives of war... The hero of the story, "Joel Thorpe," is one of those men, huge of body, keen of brain, with cast iron nerves, as sound a heart as most men, and a magnificent capacity for bluff. He has lived and risked and lost in a dozen countries, been almost within reach of fortune a dozen times, and always missed her until, finally, in London, by promoting a great rubber syndicate he becomes a multi-millionaire. He marries the most beautiful and one of the most impecunious peeresses in England and retires to his country estate. There, as a gentleman of leisure, he loses his motive in life, loses power for lack of opportunity, and grows less commanding even in the eyes of his wife, who misses the uncompromising, barbaric strength which took her by storm and won her. Finally he evolves a gigantic philanthropic scheme of spending his money as laboriously as he made it.
It is very fitting that Mr. Frederic's last book should be in praise of action, the thing that makes the world go round; of force, however misspent, which is the sum of life as distinguished from the inertia of death. In the forty-odd years of his life he wrote almost as many pages as Balzac, most of it mere newspaper copy, it is true, read and forgotten, but all of it vigorous and with the stamp of a strong man upon it. And he played just as hard as he worked—alas, it was the play that killed him! The young artist who illustrated the story gave to the pictures of "Joel Thorpe" very much the look of Harold Frederic himself, and they might almost stand for his portraits. I fancy the young man did not select his model carelessly... The man won his place in England much as his hero won his, by defiance, by strong shoulder blows, by his self-sufficiency and inexhaustible strength...
In point of execution and literary excellence, both The Market Place and Gloria Mundi are vastly inferior to The Damnation of Theron Ware , or that exquisite London idyl, March Hares... Both Gloria Mundi and The Market Place bear unmistakable evidences of the slack rein and the hasty hand. Both of them contain considerable padding, the stamp of the space writer. They are imperfectly developed, and are not packed with ideas like his earlier novels. Their excellence is in flashes; it is not the searching, evenly distributed light which permeates his more careful work. There were, as we know too well, good reasons why Mr. Frederic should work hastily. He needed a large income and he worked heroically, writing many thousands of words a day to obtain it... Achilles was a god in all his nobler parts, but his feet were of the earth and to the earth they held him down, and he died stung by an arrow in the heel.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Crane</span> American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Stephen Crane was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Norris</span> American journalist and novelist (1870-1902)

Benjamin Franklin Norris Jr. was an American journalist and novelist during the Progressive Era, whose fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The Octopus: A Story of California (1901) and The Pit (1903).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willa Cather</span> American writer (1873–1947)

Willa Sibert Cather was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

<i>Death Comes for the Archbishop</i> 1927 novel by Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by American author Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory.

<i>A Lost Lady</i> 1923 novel by Willa Cather

A Lost Lady is a 1923 novel by American writer Willa Cather. It tells the story of Marian Forrester and her husband, Captain Daniel Forrester, who live in the Western town of Sweet Water along the Transcontinental Railroad. Throughout the story, Marian—a wealthy married socialite—is pursued by a variety of suitors and her social decline mirrors the end of the American frontier. The work had a significant influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby.

<i>My Ántonia</i> Novel by Willa Cather

My Ántonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">S. S. McClure</span> Irish-American publisher (1857 – 1949)

Samuel Sidney McClure was an Irish-American publisher who became known as a key figure in investigative, or muckraking, journalism. He co-founded and ran McClure's Magazine from 1893 to 1911, which ran numerous exposées of wrongdoing in business and politics, such as those written by Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Lincoln Steffens. The magazine ran fiction and nonfiction by the leading writers of the day, including Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Joel Chandler Harris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, William Allen White and Willa Cather.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Frederic</span> American journalist (1856–1898)

Harold Frederic was an American journalist and novelist. His works include In the Valley (1890), The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), and The Market Place (1899).

<i>O Pioneers!</i> 1913 novel by Willa Cather

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by American author Willa Cather, written while she was living in New York. It was her second published novel. The title is a reference to a poem by Walt Whitman entitled "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" from Leaves of Grass (1855).

<i>One of Ours</i> 1922 novel by Willa Cather

One of Ours is a 1922 novel by Willa Cather that won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel. It tells the story of the life of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska native in the first decades of the 20th century. The son of a successful farmer and an intensely pious mother, he is guaranteed a comfortable livelihood. Nevertheless, Wheeler views himself as a victim of his father's success and his own inexplicable malaise.

<i>The Professors House</i>

The Professor's House is a novel by American novelist Willa Cather. Published in 1925, the novel was written over the course of several years. Cather first wrote the centerpiece, “Tom Outland's Story,” and then later wrote the two framing chapters “The Family” and “The Professor.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cora Crane</span> American adventuress, "madame," journalist

Cora Crane, born Cora Ethel Eaton Howarth was an American businesswoman, nightclub and bordello owner, writer and journalist. She is best known as the common-law wife of writer Stephen Crane from 1896 to his death in 1900, and took his name although they never married. She was still legally married to her second husband, Captain Donald William Stewart, a British military officer who had served in India and then as British Resident of the Gold Coast, where he was a key figure in the War of the Golden Stool (1900) between the British and the Ashanti Empire in present-day Ghana.

<i>Lucy Gayheart</i>

Lucy Gayheart is Willa Cather's eleventh novel. It was published in 1935. The novel revolves round the eponymous character, Lucy Gayheart, a young girl from the fictional town of Haverford, Nebraska, located near the Platte River.

"A Death in the Desert" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in The Scribner's in January 1903.

Her Boss is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in Smart Set in October 1919.

The Professor's Commencement is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in New England Magazine in June 1902

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gus Heege</span> American dramatist

Augustus J. "Gus" Heege was an American playwright and actor, whose works were popular at the end of the 19th century.

<i>The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science</i> Book by Georgine Milmine and Willa Cather

The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909) is a highly critical account of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and the early history of the Christian Science church in 19th-century New England. It was published as a book in November 1909 in New York by Doubleday, Page & Company. The original byline was that of a journalist, Georgine Milmine, but a 1993 printing of the book declared that novelist Willa Cather was the principal author; however, this assessment has been questioned by more recent scholarship which again identifies Milmine as the primary author, although Cather and others did significant editing. Cather herself usually wrote that she did nothing more than standard copy-editing, but sometimes that she was the primary author.

David Hamilton Stouck is a Canadian literary critic and biographer, formerly Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.

Hard Punishments, also sometimes referred to as Cather's Avignon story, is the final, unpublished, and since lost novel by Willa Cather, almost entirely destroyed following her death in 1947. It is set in medieval Avignon.

References

  1. Lillian Gilkes, Cora Crane: A Biography of Mrs. Stephen Crane, Indiana University Press; 1st edition (1960)
  2. Willa Cather's Review of 'The Market Place' by Harold Frederic, Pittsburg Leader , 10 June 1899, at Read Book Online