"To make his characters swarm," said
Mr. Henry James in a critical article in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (August,
1903), "was the task he set himself very nearly from the first, that was
the secret he triumphantly mastered."
"Naturalism" as a school had a comparatively brief existence--Zola
himself departed largely from its principles after the conclusion of the
Rougon-Macquart series--but its effects have been far-reaching on
the literature of many countries. In England the limits of literary
convention have been extended, and pathways have been opened up along
which later writers have not hesitated to travel, even while denying the
influence of the craftsman who had cleared the way. It is safe to say
that had _L'Assommoir_ never been written there would have been no _Jude
the Obscure_, and the same remark applies to much of the best modern
fiction. In America, Frank Norris, an able writer who unfortunately died
before the full fruition of his genius had obviously accepted Zola
as his master, and the same influence is also apparent in the work of
George Douglas, a brilliant young Scotsman whose premature death left
only one book, _The House with the Green Shutters_, as an indication
of what might have sprung from the methods of modified naturalism.
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