The Campaign for Realism in the New York Periodical Press

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that the fight for greater realism in literature and life was long-lasting and transpired not on a single front but across many battlefields involving a wide variety of actors. Often, war itself was the impetus, first in the rewriting of the “facts” and significance of the Civil War and later as a means of response to the masculine bluster and bloodlust wrought by the Spanish-American War. The gender and class wars of the 1880s and 1890s were also relevant to this embattled genre, as were the effects of industrialization and immigration, which led to the massive growth of New York at this time, where so many of the newspapers and magazines promoting the various strands of realism were based. New York, war, and social issues were all entangled in the emergence of this genre, as numerous New York authors and artists sought to make sense of modern America and mold it to their own visions.