Fifty Years of the American Novel: A Christian Appraisal

Scribner's, 1951. First edition. Octavo, original brown cloth, original dust jacket. Bookseller's label. Toning to spine of dust jacket, crease and closed tear to top panel of jacket. About-fine.

THE "CATHOLIC MOMENT" IN AMERICAN LETTERS

First edition of this mid-century history of the modern American novel, from a distinctly Catholic perspective. World War II had initiated the decline of the dominant Protestant establishment and all but eliminated the divide between Catholics and the wider American culture. "American Catholics had escaped the confines of parish and ghetto and entered the middle class and the wilds of postwar America. They were going to college and reading for pleasure." (Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own). In 1951, the old-line, Ivy League-ish publisher, Scribner's, issued Fifty Years of the American Novel, edited by Father Harold C. Gardiner, the literary editor at America magazine. One gets the sense in these pages of a distinct Catholic Literary Scholarship leaving the periphery and edging towards the center stage of American letters. With Dedication in Latin ("Christo Regi/Et/Conservis Ejus/Eum/Ut Artes Experiment") and Gardiner's Foreword, dated "June 6, 1951 / Campion House / New York City." Authors studied include Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, James T. Farrell, and Robert Penn Warren. With Notes on the Contributors (including Marshall McLuhan) and an Index to Titles of Novels.