PREFACE.

T

HESE are not biographies that are col

lected here, but a series of sketches, anecdotes, and personal reminiscences relating to the more modern authors—that is, the authors who are now living, or who have died very recently and whose work belongs to the present half of the century. As the book is a compilation, the editor has occasionally been hampered by want of available material, and if the reader misses any face which he would like to have seen in a gallery of this sort, he will understand that it is because no satisfactory "pen picture" could be found.

The thanks of the editor are due to the publishers of the various magazines from which articles have been selected, and also to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., for permission to

make extracts from two or three of their copyrighted works, especially from Hawthorne's Note-Books-which are not only interesting as revealing the inner workings of a rare and delicate genius, but contain a large amount of entertaining literary gossip in regard to many of his most famous contemporaries.