ONE who enters Chicago unacquainted with it, having no open sesame to its hospitable doors, knowing the city only by its streets, its hotels, and its theatres, is disturbed by an unpleasant emotion. If he comes from some well-regulated, cultivated, and placid town of the eastern part of this country, or from England or Germany, he feels shaken out of poise and peace by a tremendous discord. He sees a city ankle-deep in dirt, swathed in smoke, wild with noise, and frantic with the stress of life. He sees confusion rampant, and the fret and fume of the town rise and brood above it like hideous Afrits. But as time goes on — and even supposing the man continues to remain a stranger among the two millions of his fellow men who make up the city — he experiences a change of sentiment. He ceases to be shocked, and becomes interested. It occurs to him that if commerce is ever epic, it is so here. He feels the beat of the city like the vibration of mighty drums, and the thing he thought a discord he discovers to be the rhythm of great movements. The drab sky, the dirty streets, the dusky air, the dark-clothed figures of the people, are all in harmony, and it seems dramatically fitting that a city in the throes of its toil should wear its working clothes. It is grimy with its labor, and breathless and noisy forging its Balmung with mighty shouts. He who comes to Chicago to seek his fortune, possessing delicate traditions, having been brought up among persons of similar traditions, is confused and angered by the treatment he receives. He discovers that he must be successful if he would be noticed; that he must be in need if he would be helped. But if he makes his way in law-abiding, frugal, and lonely fashion, he will attract no attention. And first and last, in poverty and in riches, in sickness and in health, the town will roar at him; if he is afraid, it will roar twice as loud as it did before. Its furnaces and forges, its cable systems and syndicates, its slaughterhouses and wheatpits, its railroads and elevators, its greedy breadwinners and greedy millionaires, and the boats upon its filthy river will all roar. So, inevitably, at last, in a puny way, he will roar back. He will say Chicago has no peace, no leisure, no aspirations save those of a materialistic sort, no religion, no refinement. Sometimes, even after he has found he is mistaken in saying these things, he will go on saying them, because he cannot forgive Chicago for enticing him, with her commercial allurements, away from the home of his youth and the things to which he was born. He lays to her account all the pangs of homesickness which he suffers, and he misrepresents her, as it is the fate of new cities to be misrepresented.

Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie is a collection of articles, editorials, and narratives by Elia Peattie written during her tenure at the Omaha World-Herald from 1888 to 1896, richly illustrated with photographs from the period. Elia (Wilkinson) Peattie (1862?1935) was born during the Civil War and came of age at the advent of the era of the New Woman. In many ways Peattie embodied this new age of independence for women, writing both fiction and journalism and becoming one of the first Plains women to write editorial columns in a major newspaper that addressed public issues. ø Not shy with her opinions about current events in the state of Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, Peattie tackled subjects such as the Wounded Knee Massacre, capital punishment and lynchings, prostitution, the Omaha stockyards, beet-field workers in Grand Island, schools and child rearing, the need for orphanages, shelters for unwed mothers, charity hospitals, and the New Woman. ø Editor Susanne George Bloomfield includes a biography of Peattie, who is described as "tall, dignified, and kindly, and possessing a wicked sense of humor." Peattie's work now stands as a rare and valuable history of Nebraska, showing us a lively frontier society through the eyes of a woman engaged in the life of her community and her own struggle to balance her family and career

Chicago and the Making of American Modernism is the first full-length study of the vexed relationship between America's great modernist writers and the nation's “second city.” Michelle E. Moore explores the ways in which the defining writers of the era-Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald-engaged with the city and reacted against the commercial styles of "Chicago realism" to pursue their own, European-influenced mode of modernist art. Drawing on local archives to illuminate the literary culture of early 20th-century Chicago, this book reveals an important new dimension to the rise of American modernism.

This is the biography of Kate M. Cleary, a 19th century Nebraska writer whose sketches, short stories, essays, and poetry concentrated on the experiences of pioneer women, including a selection of her writings. Treats Cleary in relation to the growth of a small town, ideas of women's duties and rights, the issues of birth control, childbirth, and drug addiction. Susanne K. George is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She is the author of The Adventures of The Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart, also available in a Bison Books edition.

The Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume One, surveys the lives and writings of nearly 400 Midwestern authors and identifies some of the most important criticism of their writings. The Dictionary is based on the belief that the literature of any region simultaneously captures the experience and influences the worldview of its people, reflecting as well as shaping the evolving sense of individual and collective identity, meaning, and values. Volume One presents individual lives and literary orientations and offers a broad survey of the Midwestern experience as expressed by its many diverse peoples over time.Philip A. Greasley's introduction fills in background information and describes the philosophy, focus, methodology, content, and layout of entries, as well as criteria for their inclusion. An extended lead-essay, "The Origins and Development of the Literature of the Midwest," by David D. Anderson, provides a historical, cultural, and literary context in which the lives and writings of individual authors can be considered.This volume is the first of an ambitious three-volume series sponsored by the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and created by its members. Volume Two will provide similar coverage of non-author entries, such as sites, centers, movements, influences, themes, and genres. Volume Three will be a literary history of the Midwest. One goal of the series is to build understanding of the nature, importance, and influence of Midwestern writers and literature. Another is to provide information on writers from the early years of the Midwestern experience, as well as those now emerging, who are typically absent from existing reference works.