Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002

The magnet of New York began to draw writers away from New Jersey as far back as the days of Gilder and Stedman. Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Hillyer, and Edmund Wilson are associated with New Jersey only by the accident of birth. Conversely, others, such as Mary Wilkins Freeman, Joseph C. Lincoln, and Honore Willsie Morrow, have made their homes here but have continued to write of other locales.

Contemporary literature in New Jersey reflects the diverse elements of American writing rather than any specific qualities inherent in the State. Princeton is the nearest approach to a literary center and there the flavor of a more sedate period lingers in the essays of George McLean Harper, the novels and essays of Katherine Fullerton Gerould, the travel books and biographies of James Barnes, the historical works of William Starr Myers, and the educational writing of Christian Gauss -- to mention only a few diverse authors.

New Jersey novelists did not follow the lead of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who based This Side of Paradise on his student experiences at Princeton. They eschewed interpreting the spirit of the "jazz age" a decade ago, as they now for the most part avoid the problems of industrial and social conflict. Josephine Lawrence of Newark has come closest to current issued with a few novels that examine the domestic and business pattern of the middle class. Before he devoted himself exclusively to writing on dogs and travel, Albert Payson Terhune of Pompton Plains wrote several novels with a background of pre-war liberalism.

Greater diversity of temperament and interest characterizes the present-day poets of the State. Amelia Josephine Burr and Mrs. Dwight W. Morrow, of Englewood, representing the older tradition in both form and subject matter, have produced several volumes of charming and graceful verse.

William Carlos Williams, physician and author of Rutherford, has published The Great American Novel, A Voyage to Pagany, Life Along the Passaic River, some translations from the French, and a considerable amount of rather distinctive poetry. In 1926 he was awarded the Dial prize of $2,000 for services to American literature, and in 1931 he won a prize in poetry. His verse, free in form, is generally marked by social implications.

A liberal in politics and poetry, Louis Ginzberg of Paterson often embodies a touch of mysticism in his delicately constructed lyrics. The Revolutionary tradition of recording the State's history and development in verse is revived in the Jersey Jingles by Leonard H. Robbins of Montclair, as well as in the work of Joseph Folsom of Newark.

Preoccupation with the national scene has tended to blind New Jersey writers to the regional characteristics of their own State. No one has yet done for New Jersey what, for instance, William Faulkner has done for Mississippi or Robert Frost for New Hampshire. Appreciation of the local scene has been left, as a rule, to the journalists. No poet has yet written a ballad on the Pineys or the Jackson Whites. An outstanding story of mill life in Passaic or Paterson remains to be written, and, save for The Tides of Barnegat, the fishermen and oystermen of the coast are material left unused by creative writers. This virtually unexplored field requires only the touch of skillful authors to demonstrate its value as a source of American literature.

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